A Period of Adjustment
by Iellix
Summary: She wanted to stay in Acre, because she felt she owed her uncle for his kindness; he agreed to stay with her, because he didn't want to live indefinitely without her. But they have chosen a world to which neither of them belongs. Will/Djaq, post S2.
1. The Horse Market

Pretty much since the end of the second series, I've had it in my head to write a story about Djaq and Will and their life together in Acre. I kept putting it off, and now it's getting a little late. The third series has only _just_ started (not sure what to think of it; really, BBC? _Really?)_ so it's possible that _this_ story won't match up with later canon events—if that happens, I'll change the summary to warn for AU or alternate timeline. This story takes place after the end of 'Second Chance', but you don't have to read that story to understand this one. (It just might help.)

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the BBC's characters—I only borrow them sometimes. Any of the characters you don't recognize, chances are I made them up.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

It was morning, and very early—early enough to still be dark outside—but already warm enough that Will had kicked the sheets off. The days became hot very fast here; the nights were cool but just as soon as the sun rose, it grew warm quickly. What month was it now? End of November, maybe—beginning of December? If he was still in England it would be icy cold, and he'd be sleeping under many blankets and waking up to brush the frost out of his hair.

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling; he had no reason to be awake this early, and would have _liked_ to have slept longer, but it was a habit now. His days always began early in Sherwood. Maybe he would be able to sleep past sunup as he became more acclimated to this new place and this new life. He'd been in Acre with Djaq for a fortnight, but it still sometimes surprised him to wake up indoors, on a bed, rather than in the forest. Nobody was calling on him to arm himself and prepare for a fight, or rousing him to make deliveries before the sun came up, or to run and hide from the Sherriff's guards who had come into the forest again to make trouble for the gang. Here it was quiet and peaceful.

It felt _weird._

He turned to his left, but the space next to him was empty. Djaq must've already gone back to her own room. They weren't married—not _yet—_and had separate rooms in the house, but they rarely stayed apart at night. After the house had gone to bed, she would sneak into his room and sleep there with him; and in the morning, before everybody else woke up, she would go back to her own room and disarrange the bedclothes so it looked as if the bed had been slept in so that nobody would be the wiser. She hadn't minded at all that their friends knew when they slept together, but she was unwilling to have that same cavalier attitude about it with her uncle and the people she grew up with.

"These are people who knew me when I was little," she tried to explain. "It would be more than a little odd for everybody involved if I went from being twelve years old in their minds to sharing a room with a _man."_

Maybe the people here knew a different Djaq than he did—that she was a totally different person now than when she lived here. For one thing, the woman _they_ knew was Safiyyah. Her _real_ name was Safiyyah, and 'Djaq' was the name she'd taken from her deceased brother. He learned quickly not to call her that where other people could hear it—strangers would look up with questioning expressions on their faces to see why the idiot Englishman was calling a woman by a _man's name._ So he had to train himself to call her 'Safiyyah' when others were about; in private, however, she was still Djaq. She always would be to him.

She _acted_ much different now than she did when they were in the forest. Then she had just been 'one of the lads'—smiling and laughing with them, fighting alongside them, following Robin's directions, and accepting their unspoken rule that they were all exactly the same. And aside from being confronted with an undercover Djaq in a dress when they made a move on the Sherriff's strong-room, Will was probably the only one who _didn't_ think of her as just another one of the lads. Here, though, it was completely different. She dressed differently, in feminine clothing, with silver bangles on her wrists and dangling from her earlobes; she acted as a well-brought-up Saracen woman was likely expected to act. Even though he'd always _suspected_ that the object of his affections came from a far better upbringing than him, now more than ever he was confronted with that fact. She was nobility, from an _obscenely_ wealthy family, and so far out of his league that he almost wondered what she saw in him.

And then, when it was just the two of them, she was still the same woman he'd always known and loved.

The smells from the kitchen were wafting up through the courtyard and through the open window in his room—the cooks were already starting to make breakfast. He pulled a pillow over his head and flattened it, trying to block out the smells of the spices they used. It was an _overpowering_ smell to his nose; apart from salt, he'd never tasted or even _smelled_ much spice in his life. It was a luxury available only to the upper classes, certainly never something that a dirt-poor carpenter could possibly afford. Except in Acre, apparently, they were easier to obtain and far more plentiful—on the market days, it scented the entire city right up to the rooftops. All of those too-powerful smells mixing together in the air gave him a headache. He'd grown used to the less-intense smells of the kitchens, but he still didn't like it.

It was still dark, and even the morning call to prayer was still a long ways off. Breakfast wouldn't be for another few hours yet, and everybody who didn't have some work that needed to be done was still in bed asleep. Perhaps he should try to get a little more sleep himself—just a few minutes, at least. He didn't have to go anywhere, or do anything. He rolled onto his stomach and kept the pillow flattened over his head, but he couldn't make himself go back to sleep. When it grew too warm under that pillow, he tore it from his head, only to have an even more intense smell of spice choke him.

This bed was _lonely._ He'd gotten used to it being too soft—stuffed with feathers instead of sharp straw—and to the too-many pillows and the sheets that didn't leave a rash on his skin in the morning. But sleeping all alone with a room all to himself wasn't as easy to acclimate to. All his life he'd shared very close quarters with many other people—being by himself in a big room, without the sounds of other people sleeping, felt lonely. And on the nights when Djaq _didn't_ come and stay with him, he found it almost impossible to get to sleep. He just couldn't do it.

Sleep was elusive now, too.

He sat up and leaned over the side of the bed, reaching one long arm down to root around underneath it for something. He found the wooden box just where he'd left it, hidden carefully up in the bed slats. He was a little surprised that none of the household staff had found it yet—it was a fairly good-sized box, a foot long and wide and more than six inches deep, but apparently nobody gave much thought to cleaning _underneath_ the beds so it remained undisturbed in its hiding place. He pulled it into his lap and opened it.

Old, well-loved pieces of clothing, full of holes, were neatly rolled up inside it. He ran his hands over the coarse fabric—his old clothes. A rather cantankerous-looking old man argued with Djaq for _ages_ about it. He had no idea what was being said—the exchange was entirely in Arabic, and so rapid that he wondered if either of them were going to chip their teeth on the words—but he learned later that the man had wanted to take their English wool clothing, all dirty and smelly from having been worn almost nonstop, and burn them. Djaq hadn't let him do it, and argued with him until he'd either relented or given up all together, and then she gave the bundle to _him._ He kept them in this box, though he had no idea why he'd even wanted to. Perhaps it was because they were among his last real, tangible links to England.

He pulled one piece in particular out—an old shirt, long faded to a sort of dusty purplish brown colour and the pattern that had once adorned it almost indistinguishable. It had ragged edges at the collar and sleeves and on the bottom where it had been cut down to fit the pervious wearer. Whether or not Djaq _knew_ she'd given him her old shirt along with his own things he had no idea—but it was still there and he kept it.

The fabric was thick and heavy, clumsy, made with only one function in mind: to cover her and keep her warm. It didn't float or swirl around her like her Saracen clothes did, nor was it brightly coloured or of any speakable quality. He closed his eyes and touched it to his cheek. It was coarse and scratchy—wool, not silk. But when he inhaled deeply, he could still smell Djaq on it. Filthy Djaq, covered in dirt and sleeping on the ground in the forest with the rest of them, wearing the same clothes day in and day out; there was still, too, the faint hint of the forest embedded in that cloth. As he breathed it, he could almost imagine himself there once again, among the green and the towering trees.

In his mind, he pictured their camp—the one he was so proud of, that he'd designed and built, cleverly hidden and camouflaged with the forest floor, that kept them from living like gypsies and always going from one campsite to another—and imagined that they were all there together. Robin fletching arrows, Much stirring something in that great iron pot, John quietly brooding—John was always brooding about something, even if there was nothing to brood _about—_and Allan, always uncomfortable with silence, trying to talk to him. He imagined Marian was also there, alive and whole and well, looking up from her own small chore every so often to look cheekily at Robin. Even in his mind, Djaq was busying herself with her magical herbs—she always hated it when he called them 'magic'—but every so often she'd look up from her work and fix _him_ with the same mooncalf expression that Marian would look upon Robin with.

That was a perfect place, he decided. His mind blocked out the heat of the morning and the smell from the kitchens and the sounds of a crowded city waking up, replacing it with a comfortably familiar coolness and the smells and gentle sounds of the forest. Slowly, he fell asleep to that. Acre would be his new home for a long while—until Djaq decided it was time to go back to England—and he accepted that. But it didn't stop him from missing his forest, and the people in it.

o…o

He didn't know how long he'd slept. He hardly even realized that he _had_ fallen asleep until he was aware that somebody was trying to wake him up. Anybody who was sent up to his room to wake him up usually tried to do it from a distance, without touching him—except for the crabby manservant, who would stand directly over him and bark at him in Arabic until he scared himself awake. Whoever was in his room now was sitting on the edge of the bed and gently brushing his hair back with cool hands.

"Will."

The voice sounded foggy over his head; he didn't respond.

"Will."

The hand went from his hair to his shoulder and shook him slightly.

"Wake up."

"Nuh."

He was rattled again.

"Up!"

He grumbled this time; in reply, he was rattled harder.

"Don't be _horrible!"_ He groused in a rather Much-like whinge as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. The room was flooded with light and very warm now—how long had he been asleep? And sitting at the edge of the bed, a little grin on her face and her lower lip caught between her teeth in that heart-melting fashion, was Djaq.

"Good morning," she purred.

Grunt.

"Though I suppose 'afternoon' is a more appropriate greeting," she added. "You slept very late, but I did not have the heart to wake you before now. You have not been sleeping like you should."

"Can't help it," he said back. "I keep expecting someone to come and tell me it's time to make deliveries. Or steal from somebody. Or could I please stop Much killing Allan with his ladle."

She laughed softly and shook her head. "I know it is a lot to get used to," she said. "Even _I_ am finding it difficult, and this is the life I used to live. I cannot imagine how strange it must seem to you."

He nodded slowly. She came forward and planted a gentle kiss to the top of his head.

She pulled away suddenly, as if remembering something, and reached into the folds of her shawl for something. "This is for you," she said as she withdrew a little cloth bundle. "You missed breakfast."

Will hadn't noticed he was even hungry until then and his stomach let out a loud growl. There was some fruit and bread and cheese in the bundle, probably the plainest food she could find, and he ate them all so quickly he ended up with hiccups.

"I had to sneak that out of the kitchen," she told him as she passed him a water skin. "Khalad was there and he would _not_ take kindly if he saw me stealing from him."

"_Hup!"_ He hiccupped again. "Why?"

She shrugged. "He hates me—always did. I have no idea why."

"I'm sure he doesn't _hate_ you," he said. _"Hup!"_

"He was the stuff of my nightmares when I was little. I used to imagine that Iblis—the devil—looked like him."

"That's…"

"He used to crack my hand with a spoon any time I went near his kitchen."

Pause.

"And drag me about by my hair when he was angry with me. Which was often." She threaded her hands briskly through her short dark hair. "I don't know if he could do it anymore, but I would rather not tempt him."

He pictured it in his head—Djaq as a girl being forcibly towed around this house by her hair—and he bristled. He didn't like knowing that anybody had treated her that way, even though it was such a long time ago.

They were quiet a while before she tapped his leg and stood up.

"Come on," she told him. "Up."

"I _am_ up."

"I mean get out of bed. And get dressed. We are going out."

She simply stated it. She didn't ask him if he wanted to and probably wouldn't have taken no for an answer even if he'd refused. He didn't mind that, though—he sort of liked it. She was always the one who took charge. In _everything._

"Where are we going?"

"The horse market," she said.

A horse market? He frowned. "Why?"

She sighed. "Because I am tired of trotting around on Bassam's half-dead mare and I cannot stand camels. I need something I can get around on—and so do you."

His frown deepened. Horses were expensive enough to buy without having to keep one. He didn't want to bring that kind of expense on Djaq's family. "I can't take—"

Apparently she knew what he was thinking. "Yes you can," she interrupted.

"But—"

"Please?" She looked at him with pleading eyes and his willpower dissolved. He could hardly ever say no to her when his feelings were a secret; nowadays it was absolutely impossible. She always knew _exactly_ what to do to get him to do what she wanted—even _before_ she realized she was doing it.

"All right," he said. "I'll get dressed."

In all of his life, Will had never seen a people more in love with their horses than the Saracens were. He'd always thought of them as beasts of burden—something to pull a plough or a wagon, to carry men into battle or take them from one place to another faster than simply being on foot. They were a _tool_ to use—and an expensive one to maintain, at that—but not anything much beyond that.

The Saracens, on the other hand, almost _revered_ their horses. Horses were a show of wealth, for sure, but more than that they were a show of wealth _draped_ in other shows of wealth. The horses were dressed better than most _people_ he'd known. Expensive silks and bangles, decorative saddles, and heavily embroidered blankets decorated the horses of the wealthiest people. Even those who _weren't_ quite so wealthy tried to make _some_ effort to adorn their horses and braided colourful glass beads into their long manes and tails.

On the walk through the market, Djaq explained it to him. Her people were a horse people; Allah had blessed their horses, and for thousands of years they had carried her people through victory and defeat alike. Mohammed, the last prophet, had five of the most faithful horses and from them were bred the mounts of royalty, and rose to Heaven on the back of a horse.

It seemed interesting that their faith should pay so much attention to horses.

They were such _spindly_ little animals, though. Petite and lithe, more like deer than horses. The horses he'd been around in England were proper big bulky horses, strong enough to carry a man in armour or stocky ponies to pull a heavily-laden cart. He found it hard to believe that an empire could have been built on the backs of _these_ dainty and delicate little things. He worried that if he tried to mount one of them, he'd simply snap it in half.

But apparently they'd done _something_ right, since the people were so enamoured with them.

He stood at the makeshift fence and watched the little Saracen horses flit around their temporary pen at the horse market while Djaq was off elsewhere probably arguing with the stablemaster. That was another thing these people loved: _arguing._

Colourful tails and bodies floated past him as he stood there. Reds and greys and creamy whites and wildly varying shades of brown ran back and forth, showing off for the people watching and begging for treats. If he hadn't believed that horses were incapable of it, he'd've thought that they were _vain_ creatures.

As Will watched the horses, he became aware that the other spectators were now looking at _him._ Why wouldn't they? He was so obviously _not_ one of them. He was European—these people had probably come to associate anybody with pale skin with the Crusaders who savaged their homeland. Some of them looked at him with a frightened look and others with curiosity; it made him uncomfortable and he shifted in place, trying to think of something else. He could hear people talking around him, but he couldn't understand what any of them were saying.

Djaq had been _trying_ to teach him some of her language, but it was hard for him to grasp and he still couldn't speak more than a few words—nor could he understand much of what was spoken to or around him. It was a curious feeling, strangely deaf to the world around him. All of these sounds and words and people talking and it all had no meaning to him. He was always afraid that they were talking about _him,_ saying terrible things—or that they were talking about Djaq and wondering what such a well-born woman was doing wasting her time with the dirty Englishman.

Rather than think too much on it, he looked forward and focused his attention on the horses.

A showy dappled-grey mare stepped closer to him, possibly eyeing him as something of a curiosity herself. She was taller than the rest, but just as lean and slim and delicate-looking. The mare went around the pen and stopped to stare at him again, then repeated the process—maybe she wondered if the Englishman was safe to walk up to. Then she came up to him and thrust her silky pink-and-grey muzzle into his hands, apparently demanding his complete and undivided attention, and he laughed softly.

Even if the _people_ here wouldn't like him, perhaps their beloved horses would.

When he felt a hand flatten on his back, he knew it was Djaq.

"Safiyyah," he said, using the name he had to use for her in public. He could swear he saw her twitch when he said it.

"She likes you," she commented, nodding to the mare.

"Possibly because she doesn't know I'm English."

She extended a hand and let the horse snuffle and lip her palm.

"Well, I will not tell her if you don't," she said. "It will be our little secret."

He snorted at her little joke.

"You are a good and gentle man. She knows that—and so do I."

She squeezed his hand gently, and he felt himself relax. He hadn't even realized how tense he'd been until just then. For the time being, at least, he stopped caring that there were people around possibly talking about them. Having Djaq around made him feel almost… _safer._ Not knowing the language or the customs or much of _anything_ about this place made him nervous, but as long as she was there with him he didn't feel so anxious.

"Come on," she said, breaking his reverie. She was already halfway over the fence. "If you are going to take one of them home with you, you ought to get to know them first."

He wanted to protest again at the unnecessary expense that would come with getting _him_ a horse of his own, but he knew there was little point in that. In order to get _anywhere_ outside of Acre, they'd need mounts—the desert was massive and all but impassable on foot, and the distances between cities were far more vast here than he'd ever known in England.

So he followed her over the fence and stepped in amongst the horses.

Immediately, the tall grey mare was right at his side, nudging his shoulder with her nose and following him wherever he went. She started chasing the others away from him, so that she could keep him all to herself.

"I should probably warn you," he told her in a low tone, as if the horse could understand him. "I'm practically a married man."

She rubbed her head against his chest and leaned into him.

"I'll only break your heart."

Nudge, nudge.

"You can tell her that all you like, but I do not think she will care," a female voice said. It wasn't Djaq; he turned around to see who was talking to him.

Standing at the fence and leaning forward to pet the horses as they walked by, was a very fair-skinned Saracen woman. She was dressed simply, but the quality of her clothing betrayed her high status—her tunic was trimmed with colourful threads and beads, and the loose veil she wore over her hair was bright peacock-blue silk. Dark red-brown hair peeked out from underneath the shawl; her eyes were green-blue and she had freckles all across her nose and cheeks. She hardly looked Saracen at all. She was far too light—but she was too dark to be English.

"She is smitten with you—and these horses are very determined."

"So it would seem."

"You are looking for a mount?"

After a pause, he nodded. No sense in lying.

"Hmm…" she reached out to run her hands along the horse's neck and shoulders. "She is good and sturdy. Strong. Young, too."

Wonderful—another horse person.

"She would be a good mount for you," she continued. "Tall. Most people would not want her because of that, because she could not bear perfect foals, but she would do well for you."

She paused and looked him up and down once before nodding to herself.

"You are all leg."

She smiled at him, and he hesitantly smiled back. He wondered why she was even talking to him—it was surprising that she could even speak English. Most people here couldn't be bothered to soil their tongues with the language.

"Where did you learn…?" He trailed off, not knowing how to finish the question.

"When I was a girl I had a good friend who knew it," she explained. "English was our secret language—we spoke it whenever we did not want the adults to know what we were saying."

"Oh."

There was a silence then. He didn't know what to say and she didn't say anything at all. Finally, she reached into the pouch at her belt.

"Here," she said, handing him a piece of bread. "Give this to her—" she nodded to the mare still standing over his shoulder "—and she will love you forever."

"Thanks."

She began to walk away through the crowd.

"Wait!" He went to the fence; she looked back over her shoulder at him. He didn't even know why he'd called out, he just didn't want to end the first conversation he'd had in days. Quickly he came up with something to say. "What's your name?"

"Gabrielle," she said.

And then she vanished into the crowded city streets, before he could say anything else.

That was… _interesting._ A Saracen woman—who hardly looked at all Saracen—with a French name who spoke English. Not only was she _not_ afraid of him, but she'd actually given him advice. And talked to him. Will had never thought himself the type to need constant conversation—that was more of Allan's thing—but having gone two weeks and hardly being able to speak to anybody was frustrating. He felt bored, and more than a little lonely. It just felt nice to _talk_ to someone.

Gabrielle. Maybe he'd see her again.

She'd been right about the bread. His grey mare gobbled it right up and then absolutely refused to let him go anywhere without being right there at his back. This horse would undoubtedly be coming back with him whether he liked it or not.

He found Djaq later, looking over a fence to another portion of the pen where a lone horse was kept. This one was coal black with a white face, and acted outright wild—kicking up dust and throwing his head and kicking his hooves out. Young men surrounded that fence and talked amongst themselves, nudging each other and behaving animatedly. Some things weren't lost in translation, he decided; he knew _exactly_ what they were doing. They were all trying to convince the others that _they_ could absolutely tame that black stallion there. They reminded him of a lot of Saracen Allans—all trying to prove that they were the best.

Djaq turned to him when he came up behind her, and grinned.

"I think I found a horse," he said casually.

"I think she decided for you," she said, reaching out to pet her muzzle over his shoulder. "Does she know you are engaged? I should hate to think that I have competition."

He laughed—he'd always known that Djaq had a sense of humour, but it didn't come out much when they were in the forest. Here in Acre, with little else to worry them, she made jokes all the time.

"She is tall—that will be good for you and your legs."

He raised his eyebrows. "That's exactly what—" then he stopped.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothing—it's just that a woman said the same thing just before. I'd need a tall horse because my legs are long."

"She spoke English?"

Nod.

Djaq frowned. "What was her name?" She asked carefully.

He wondered what was going through her head. "She said… it was Gabrielle."

Then her eyes went wide, but only briefly.

"No," she murmured. "I doubt that."

"What?" That mad no sense. Did she think he was making it up? Or was she thinking of something else?

"It is nothing." Then she turned back to the stallion in his own pen.

He would have liked to ask questions—to figure her out—but he didn't know what had intrigued her. She'd tell him eventually, he was sure, and the horse market wasn't the best place to try to talk information out of her.

She was watching the black stallion very intently.

"He is beautiful, isn't he?" She sighed.

Pause. She wasn't seriously thinking about _that horse,_ was she? There were plenty more and _far less dangerous_ horses right behind her.

"Sure," he said. "He's beautiful and he could kill you."

She snorted. "He will not hurt me. He just needs a firm hand."

He chewed his lower lip nervously, but he knew better than to argue with her.

A large man walked by—apparently the stablemaster—and she said something to him. The man looked at her with a shocked expression, and she repeated herself and pointed to the stallion. From what he could gather, the man was shocked that she was asking about _that_ horse. The stablemaster looked her over slowly—and Will did _not_ like the way he was looking at her—before he nodded and grinned.

"What's going on?" He asked.

"He said he will only let me have that stallion if I can get on his back," she explained. "I think that is fair enough. He told me that he is saddle-broken, just finicky about who he lets ride him."

"Is that even safe?"

Shrug. "He is a stallion. They are all like that."

She took off her shawl—the one he'd given her on the ship on their way _to_ Acre; it seemed like such a long time ago now—and her belt and handed them to him.

"Safiyyah—Djaq—please," he begged. That horse looked dangerous, and he didn't want her to get hurt.

"I will be fine," she murmured. "Just hold these for me."

He was hardly in a position to argue, so he just took the items and watched her scale the fence and wait for the stallion to approach her. She dug into her pockets and offered the horse some tidbits. His ears pricked forward and he carefully moved toward her. She murmured softly and gently to him, trying to coax him closer with bits of bread and fruit. At least for now, the stallion wasn't acting out—he only hoped it would _stay_ that way.

Despite being nervous, Will couldn't help but be sort of fascinated. Whether it was because she was a woman, or because of her tone, or because she was bribing him with treats, or some combination of all three, he had no idea, but the stallion was very docile with her. She was very gentle and careful with him, inspecting him with her hands over his neck and shoulders and back. He'd never seen it much before coming to Acre, but Djaq was an experienced horsewoman. It didn't surprise him, though—everybody here knew horses.

The people around the horse market had stopped to watch what was going on with interest, to see the small and harmless-looking noblewoman try to conquer the black stallion. The young men who had all been trying to convince each other that _they_ could easily do it whispered amongst themselves, probably doubting that she would be able to do it. Will knew that to the casual observer, his love looked very unassuming and harmless, like she couldn't possibly possess great strength or be a threat to anybody, and _certainly_ like she couldn't tame that horse. That was part of why he loved her so much—she didn't look as if she could hurt a fly, but she could come out on top in a fight against almost anybody.

His grey mare was breathing heavily in his ear, just as interested in the scene before them as any of the people were.

"I know," he sighed. "I'm not sure, either, but I can't stop her."

Snort, snuffle.

In the separate pen, Djaq was making her way around to the horse's side. She stroked his back, and he didn't seem bothered; she draped her arms over him, and again he did nothing. Then, quickly, she sprang up and pulled herself into position on his back.

He held his breath.

The stallion stood there for a few moments, surprised to find himself now bearing a rider.

The people watching chattered among themselves, equally surprised that she'd been able to do it. The stablemaster, who had also been watching the whole thing, nodded once—apparently he was satisfied that Djaq could handle the horse and would let her buy him. She looked over to Will and gave him a shaky smile, and he released a tense breath.

And then suddenly, the horse got over his surprise and charged across the pen, taking Djaq by surprise. She grabbed handfuls of mane and held on; then he stopped suddenly, and threw his head down, launching the woman from his back and sending her flying through the air and crashing into the fence.

"Djaq!" He forgot to call her by her proper name and didn't care what anybody thought of it as he jumped over the fence and ran to her as the crowd chattered around him.

He ran to her side and knelt on the ground next to her; she pushed herself up.

"Are you all right?" He gasped.

"Yes—I think so. Ouch."

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure. Nothing feels broken."

He looped an arm around her and helped her to stand—let the people watching say whatever they wanted about them.

"You scared me," he murmured to her.

"I am fine, I promise. I will hurt tomorrow but nothing is… damaged."

"Will you leave that horse now?"

"No—I like him."

"_What?"_

"He is a little feisty, but I like that about him."

"Dj—Safiyyah—Djaq…" he sighed.

"I like a challenge, you know that," she said. Then she nodded to the horse. "He is a challenge."

"_You_ are a challenge," he whispered.

She giggled and kissed his cheek; he felt a selfish little swell of pride when he noticed the disappointed looks on the faces of some of the young men who had been watching them.

That's right, he thought smugly. Mine—all mine.

When Bassam saw what the two of them had brought home, he smiled and shook his head. They'd made good choices, he told them; then he led them to the stables where new bedding had been laid in the stalls for their horses. Then he noticed Djaq looking quite battered, and Will was worried what he was going to say about it. Instead, he just sighed.

"That is my Safiyyah," he said. "She does not do anything half way."

It seemed he was well used to this behaviour.

The following days saw Djaq waking early and spending long periods of time in a staring match with her new charge—then she'd try to ride him again and the horse would toss her around like a rag doll and sent her flying to a crumpled heap on the dusty ground. And then she'd come to bed at night, bashed and bruised from head to toe, tired but still determined. He _hated_ seeing her hurt herself, but he also knew damn well there was nothing he could possibly do or say to dissuade her from doing it again the next day. She was so determined and steely, and he loved that about her, but it also scared him. He worried that she was going to cross the line from 'determination' into 'recklessness' and hurt herself.

Like she was now.

When he wasn't taking his own mare for a ride around, he'd taken to watching her while she tried to conquer the stallion, even though there was nothing he could do if something went wrong and he had to sit there and watch her get thrown around. At least he could be there to help her up and clean the blood from her scraped-up knees and elbows.

He winced as he watched her fall again, popping right out of the saddle when her stallion jumped up and bucked, whipping his whole body and ejecting her from her seat. He expected her to crumple on the ground, but she tumbled as she fell and managed to land on her feet and immediately grabbed the reins and forced him to calm down so that she could mount again. She was being relentless—she was refusing to let the horse win this, and every time she got back into the saddle she managed to stay a little longer and the horse behaved himself a little bit more. She worked with him on the ground, too, teaching him to obey her commands and get used to having her around him.

Her stallion was far wilder than his mare—she was spirited, but not at all wild and he never felt that he was in danger of being thrown out of the saddle. The stallion was either only half-trained or was testing his boundaries.

He was still worried that she was going to hurt herself. Only yesterday she'd gotten a nasty cut on her knee when she got caught in the stirrup during a fall. He'd had to help her clean it and bandage it before it became infected, and she had been _very_ difficult to help because she kept trying to pull away from him; she apologized over and over again, saying that physicians always made the worst patients.

The horse was behaving himself now, walking along the fence at a steady pace, and Will waited nervously for the next accident to happen.

"It is difficult to watch, isn't it, Englishman?"

He turned to see Bassam standing there next to him, watching Djaq and her horse.

"Yes," he said, suddenly very tense. "It—it is. How did you know…?"

"Because I love her, too. I hate to see her hurt."

He felt suddenly nervous with the stout man there next to him, talking so casually to him. Apart from Robin and Djaq and the very occasional titled patron, he had absolutely no experience with nobility—and Djaq and Robin were hardly typical. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to act or talk or what he was supposed to say, so he was always conscious of himself whenever Bassam was around.

"You need not be so worried about yourself, you know," he said. "You are a guest in my home and my niece's intended—I should not like to think that I make you uncomfortable."

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "It's just… different. I'm not used to living this way and I don't want to upset anybody—"

"Please do not worry. I am a difficult man to upset," Bassam cut him off. "I am an old man. I have lived through a lot, and I have seen a lot. And since bringing up Safiyyah, _nothing_ can ruffle my feathers."

Will couldn't help it—he laughed. A few admissions and stories from Djaq and Bassam about her past led him to understand that she was a horrible child who got into trouble _constantly_ because she got bored so easily.

"So do not worry so much."

They were silent as they watched the scene before them. Djaq still had control, but the horse was acting out. She kept calm and steered him back on track to do just what she wanted him to do.

"She has always been that way," the older man explained.

"What way?"

"Fearless."

There was a pause; Will nodded slowly.

"She is not afraid of anything, and she is stubborn." The older man smiled and clapped him gently on the shoulder. "You shall have your hands full with her, young Englishman—but I suspect you already know this."

He smiled. "That's why I like her," he said softly.

And it was. He would be very bored if she was anything else. She was his Djaq—always.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

I have to stop this chapter before it gets out of control. But at nearly 7000 words, I think I passed that point about half a chapter ago. Oh well. I had to dig up my previous years of horse experience to write this chapter—talk about regression! I rode and trained horses for about seven years, but it's been many years since I've had anything but a casual ride. I wanted to include something in this story about horses—why not? Horses are very, very important to the people in the Middle East. They always have been—they take their horses _very_ seriously! Also, Arabs—the horses, not the people—would look pretty wimpy to someone who'd only ever seen big clunky European warhorses their whole life.

Feedback, should you choose to leave it, is always loved. Look for the next chapter in a week, just like always.


	2. In the Desert

Second chapter! Thanks to those who read and reviewed the last one. A non-AU story from me—what a shocker! The character introduced briefly last chapter, Gabrielle, will appear again before I reveal who she is. She does play a somewhat important role later on. I'm not saying why. Now, I'm slightly modifying my standard posting schedule—my old routine was to post the new chapters on Friday mornings before I went to work, but my new job starts in the afternoon so I'm keeping some funny hours. Rather than making you guys all wait to read the updates until I've dragged my lazy butt out of bed, I'll be posting on Friday morning before I go to bed. (I told you—funny hours.)

Disclaimer: I'm not claiming any ownership of the characters herein; they are the property of the BBC. Unless you don't recognize them—then I probably just made 'em up.

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o…o

"What are you waiting for?" She called impatiently to him over her shoulder. "You said that you would come with me, so come on!"

"I'll just… be right there," she heard him call back.

She sighed and leaned back in her saddle to wait. Will was much slower with his horse than she was, and she had to wait for him, but she just wanted to get _moving._ Now that she had her _own_ horse to get around on, instead of borrowing her uncle's ancient rickety mare, she was anxious to take advantage of hew newfound mobility and go for long rides. It had been such a _long_ time since the last time she'd felt that exhilaration of the desert air in her face as she flew on horseback across the sands. It had been one of her greatest joys growing up—she remembered the feeling of going at a hard gallop just as fast as she could with the wind in her hair and her clothes, spreading her arms out and pretending that she could fly. She raced anybody who would take the challenge, until nobody would challenge her anymore, and her proudest moment was the time she rode alongside a gazelle and her fleet-footed horse outran it.

Since leaving Acre, she hadn't often had horses around to ride. There was no time for such trivial pursuits when she was a battlefield physician—horses weren't for riding; they just pulled their carts of wounded soldiers—and there were precious few horses around when she was a slave masquerading as a boy. In the forest they couldn't keep any around for more than a few days; horses were hard to keep in the forest and even harder to hide. Every so often they would steal a few from the Sherriff or some wealthy pompous twit who travelled in the forest, and at any opportunity she could, Djaq would take one of them for a long ride in the forest. It was a last ride for most of those horses, who were then given to the villagers and the farmers who needed a horse to pull a cart or plough a field. The simple pleasure of a ride just wasn't something that most of the people in Nottingham knew.

The horses then hadn't been the same, of course—they were big clunky things, built to withstand cold and hold up too-heavy riders in massive suits of armour. But they still smelled the same—earthy and musty and leathery—and riding those horses had been a little bit of the freedom she once remembered and so dearly cherished. She hadn't even realized how much she'd missed her Arabians until now—those lithe and slender and swift horses of her people.

Beneath her, her stallion was growing impatient and prancing in place. He was a showy thing, young and fiery and a little hard to control, but she enjoyed the challenge. If she'd wanted an easy horse, she'd have stayed with Bassam's mare. After she got to know her new mount, she decided she was going to call him Lucifer, because frankly no other name would suffice—though she had joked a few times with Will that she should name her horse 'Allan', because he was so full of himself.

This was the first time she was going to take Lucifer out; she felt comfortable with it now that she could control him. A ride would do both of them a world of good; they were _both_ growing antsy.

Or at least it _would,_ if her love was ever going to get on his horse and _come out._

She was just about to turn over her shoulder and yell to him again when she heard the gentle clip-clopping sound of hooves on the ground.

Will was lucky that his mare was so easygoing, because otherwise she would _also_ have grown impatient with him by now. But that horse was so relaxed that she would stand there quietly and let him fumble hopelessly with his tack and leather straps until he figured out how to do it.

He rocked back and forth in he saddle as he came out, looking sheepish and apologetic.

"Are you all ready now?" She asked.

"Yes," he said bashfully.

"Are you _sure?"_

"Yes. Sorry I kept you waiting, I just had some… trouble."

"If you need help, you can ask for it," she reminded him. "I would rather that than risking your saddle falling off."

He bit his lower lip.

"Well, come on, then," she said. "When we get into the open, we can race."

"Race?" He repeated after her. "I don't know about racing…"

She didn't think he would be up for it, she thought with an inward sigh. He just wasn't secure enough in the saddle to be the racing type.

She'd had to help him get used to his new mount in between trying to gain control of Lucifer and nursing her bruises. He had always been a clumsy rider at best and had always preferred using horses to carry things rather than riding them. She'd had to train both Will and the mare at the same time. He still wasn't exactly _confident_ on horseback, but he was getting better. At the very least he knew what he was doing, and she didn't fear for his life.

The neatly paved and maintained roads within the city gave way to the rougher ones on the outskirts of town; from there, the road became smaller and the sand more abundant until they were facing an enormous and sprawling expanse of desert before them.

People were watching them, she noticed as they left the city. Even though Acre's ports made Europeans a common sight, the people here weren't used to seeing them _living amongst_ their own kind; Will was so strange to them because he lived here and dressed like them. And because he travelled with _her._ The looks on the faces of other people never let her forget the unusual decision she'd made.

Even though she could love and marry whomever she liked, women of her position often took their wealth and status into account when choosing a husband. Her choice of a penniless carpenter—and an _English_ one, at that—was comparatively strange.

Well, sod them, she thought. It was her choice to make and nobody else's.

The blazing bright orange-gold sun was at their backs as they stood at the very edge of the city, between Acre and the desert. The shadows of the buildings behind them were beginning to grow long as the sun moved.

She threw up her hood to keep her head cool; she kept wearing the same pink-and-cream shawl that Will had given her, even though there were many others of far finer quality in the clothing Bassam had gotten for her. She liked this one, and it meant something to her.

"Put your hood up," she instructed Will as his horse came up next to her. "The sun here is much stronger. It will keep it off of your face and stop you from burning to a crisp."

"All right…" he said softly, taking one hand off of the reins and attempting to pull at the fabric draped around his shoulders. He was going to need two hands for that job, but he didn't dare drop the reins completely lest he lose control of his mount.

Djaq watched him for a moment, amused, before deciding that she should help him. She pulled up alongside him so their legs were touching and reached over.

"Here," she said gently, helping him wrestle the fabric out from under the strap that held his axe to his back. Acre was for the most part a relatively peaceful city, she'd told him, but it was stupid to go anywhere else unarmed. Here, more than just the soldiers and ruffians could be a danger to them.

She fashioned a hood from the loose fabric and draped it over his dark hair and his forehead. After the weeks in her homeland, he was already browning from the sun; his cheeks had gone all pink from the sun and his hands, arms, and face were tinged brown. But he was still so very fair, and he'd burn up in the hot desert sun without precautions. That was the one malady she remembered treating more than any other in Crusaders during her time as a battlefield physician: sunburn. Some of them became so badly burned that their skin blistered and peeled.

"That should do it," she said, pulling the hood down a little further. "You can take it off when the sun goes down."

"Yes ma'am," he said. But when she looked at him he was smiling. She leaned across the gap between them and kissed his nose.

Even though they were out of the city, there was still some traffic alongside them: people on horseback and on camels, in carts or wagons, and people on foot, all coming into Acre or leaving. They went about their business and paid little mind to her or Will, except for a few of them nodding a polite 'hello'. With Acre being a port city, Europeans travelling alongside Saracen guides weren't uncommon sights.

Eventually, the pair of them split from the loosely gathered line of people; she remembered where to go from here, away from the city and the people to her old riding grounds down near the water, and soon they were all by themselves.

In every direction, there was _nothing—_and lots of it. There were just flat expanses of sandy desert all around them.

Will looked around awe, a fascinated expression on his face at all the _nothing_ around them. While he'd been in the desert before, he'd previously been too preoccupied to actually appreciate it until now; there had before been other more pressing concerns to dominate his attention. As he looked, she saw him ever so slightly mouth the word "wow". She grinned. England was such a small place, with towns every couple of miles or so and trees and rolling hills _everywhere._ So much empty space was surprising even for _her_ to see, after being away from it for so long; for Will, it must have seemed unimaginably vast.

During the ride they didn't talk about their new surroundings or the new life they had here; she didn't give him any language or culture lessons like she'd been doing for the past few weeks. She wasn't Safiyyah right now and he wasn't 'The Englishman'—they were just Will and Djaq, and for the time being they were just like they'd always been.

She led them down to the sloping beach, in an area far too rocky for the ships to get close and where there were only birds to watch them. From here they could look out and see the sun dipping low into the water.

She'd watched the scene before them countless times before—escaping the confines of the city and stealing away on horseback to this beach had been one of the simple pleasures she'd enjoyed in her youth—but every time she saw it, it was different and more beautiful. It was like Allah had invented new colours, just for the occasion. The sky was red and orange and pink and purple, the water reflecting the light of the sun and turning it into liquid gold. The very sand beneath their horse's hooves looked like gold dust. The waves rumbled up on the shore and the birds keened overhead.

"Wow," she heard him breathe. "It's…" and then he trailed off, unable to come up with adequate words to describe the scene before them.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Acre was my favourite place in the world, but I liked this even more than Acre. I could live here, I think. It never stops being beautiful." She sighed dreamily and leaned forward in the saddle, as if that might help her get closer to the blazing, bright colours before them.

"You'd sleep on the beach?" He teased gently.

"Why not? The birds do it—so can I."

She was absorbed in the scene in front of her, watching the colours shift and darken as the sun sank into the ocean; birds in the distance were little black dots in the light, and even further out were the ships, tiny black silhouettes looking more like toys than actual vessels.

He inched closer to her, but she didn't notice until he reached across the gap in between them and took her hand. She looked down at their coupled hands and then back up at him, then gently pressed her forehead against his shoulder.

o…o

It was fortunate for her that Will enjoyed riding. Whenever they had the time, they'd go out together and ride along the beaches or make their way a few miles out to where there was a town set up around a tiny oasis. He liked the ride and the freedom and the change of scenery, and Djaq was just happy to be all alone with just him and the horses.

Having leisure time was something she had to slowly acclimate to. She'd re-established herself here as a physician, just to keep herself busy, but there wasn't usually enough work for her to occupy all of her days with doctoring. She was starting to remember why she'd gotten into so much trouble as a child—even doing something stupid and dangerous was preferable to boredom. Boredom had been her enemy, so _anything_ had always seemed preferable to that.

That was probably why being in the forest with Robin and the rest of the gang had suited her so well, she thought to herself; she may have been cold and damp most of the time, and hungry, and frustrated, and often scared and in danger for her life, but she was never _bored_ doing the work they did.

But there wasn't much in the way of Robin-Hood-ing that could be done here in Acre—her people were very good at caring for their poor and widows and orphans—so she had to find _something _newto do with her days.

Going out for a ride was something fun to do, and a way to spend time with Will outside of the confines of the city.

"It is about time you caught up!" She huffed, her arms crossed over her chest and a mock-pout on her face as Will rode up behind her.

"I'm not a good racer," he told her.

"I was not even racing!"

Will wasn't nearly confident enough to race, and even if he was he was hardly the racing type. It didn't bother her much, though, since leisurely rides with him were far nicer. Still, she was hardly even going much faster than a slow canter and she was beginning to miss the exhilaration of a good race.

"You are scared of going too fast, aren't you?"

"Maybe," he said softly. He sounded embarrassed. "I just didn't think these horses could _go_ so fast."

"That is why my people bred them," she told him with a smile. "Do not be embarrassed—I do not mind. I would rather you be cautious than reckless and get hurt. Racing is not for everybody."

"Can we go slow for a while, please?" He asked, looking a little more than piteous.

"All right."

They rode for a long time—it was cool out today, and a little cloudy, and they had water skins and some food with them to eat if they got hungry, and not a care in the world.

Will asked her questions as they rode, and she answered all of them happily; he was always quietly observant, but he had a nearly insatiable curiosity. They had been in Acre a while now—more than a month—and anything he couldn't figure out himself about his new home, he wanted to know from anybody who would answer his questions.

And he asked questions about herself. Anything he didn't already know, _he wanted to know now._ She hadn't always lived in Acre, she told him; her father lived in Lod, further east from here. Bassam was a friend of her father and her father's brother, but so close to them that he was like family himself. Her father used to send them—her and her brother—to stay with him in Acre whenever he grew tired of having them causing trouble underfoot in his house.

"Which was often," she admitted.

"Why?" He asked, astonished. "Why wouldn't he want you around?"

Of course. Will came from a different world than she did—to him, it was unfathomable that a father would want to send his children away.

"He was… he was not the fondest of us, I do not think."

He looked shocked still.

"We reminded him of our mother, and he did not like being reminded. He never said it, but I think part of him blamed us for her death."

"Childbirth?"

She nodded. "Not long after. Twins are hard enough for normal women to carry, and my mother was quite small, I was told. It weakened her."

It didn't make her sad to talk about her mother's death like this—all it was was regurgitating what she'd been told. It was like talking about a stranger. She never knew the woman, and so felt very little attachment to her memory.

"I'm sorry," he offered quietly after a brief silence.

"Sometimes I envy you."

Then she allowed herself a few seconds of silent shock that those words had come out of her mouth. She had been thinking them, yes, but she hadn't actually intended on saying them out loud—she had, after all, no desire to gulch forth the details of her old life. This was neither the time nor the place to do it and she didn't like pulling up all of those old memories.

Too late now, of course. Those words were already there, hanging in the air between them.

"You _do?" _He asked, surprise written obviously in his face. _"Why?"_

"You had parents."

Silence.

"What? You _had_ to have had parents, too, unless you fell out of the sky."

The short laugh burst from her briefly. Then she explained.

"You had them, and they were _there—_you loved them and they loved you."

"I lost them," he reminded her sadly, quietly, a frown on his face.

"Yes, but before they died, you had them with you. You knew them, and you loved them. That is far more than I ever had. I never knew my mother, and my father… he and I could be further apart than the living and the dead when we were in the same house. Right there together, and so impossibly far apart."

Her mouth twitched at the corner—so much for not spilling details here and now.

"When he died, I wasn't even sad. I hardly even noticed, because it was not too much different than when he was alive."

She kept her eyes trained on Lucifer's neck.

"The people I _chose_ to have close to me became my family. I always found it more reliable to assess people myself, rather than rely on blood to pick my family _for_ me. If that makes any sense."

When she fell quiet and looked at him, she found him looking at her, wide-eyed, with a sort of awed expression.

"I—I never knew," he whispered. "That's… _sad."_

Of course the story of her own curiously detached family was weird for him to hear; for all that he grew up in poverty and she in a wealthy family, his life had been comparatively richer than hers. He had a family who loved him, and two parents to protect him, and he lived in a world that wasn't ravaged by war. She was fortunate that Bassam had been around for her and her brother; with her mother being gone and her father being alternately absent and completely indifferent to his children, her foster uncle's home was the first—indeed, the _only—_place that she felt consistently loved and wanted as a child.

"Except for my brother, the people who have always meant the most to me—the people I love and _have_ loved the best—have not been blood family."

"I don't know what to say," Will said.

"There is no need," she assured him gently, suddenly feeling a little guilty for telling him all of this. It sounded like she had a miserable childhood when she talked about it, even though it was hardly as bad as it sounded. "It is in the past."

"But it's still a part of you."

Leave it to Will to say something so simple and profoundly true. While she loved him to bits and didn't want to keep any secrets from him, she didn't want to sit here in the desert and tell him her entire life story.

She stood up in her stirrups and leaned over to kiss his cheek; he jolted, surprised, and snapped out of whatever he'd been thinking.

"One day, I shall tell you everything. But not now, not here," she said. "For now, I think, I would like to enjoy the ride."

He didn't say anything, but then, she didn't give him the opportunity to. She set off at a fast trot, but when she turned to look over her shoulder, she saw him right there behind her. Right at her back—and when the time came that she told him everything, she was sure that he would still be there, at her back, like always.

o…o

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I kept this chapter under 4000 words, and what's the first thought that comes into my head? 'Wow, that's a short chapter!' I hope you liked it. Djaq's past will come out slowly over the course of the story, rather than being divulged all at once in a massive info-dump. So don't worry, you _and_ Will are going to learn it as the story goes along.

An update will be next week—in the meantime, do enjoy. Feedback is always much-loved, should you decide to leave some.


	3. Welcome to Paradise

I forgot that this past week was the Easter holiday week, and just about everybody goes away on holiday that week. So I hope those of you who did go away enjoyed yourselves! (And that you got the chance to read the last chapter when you got back.) This chapter does become rather a little dark—living in Acre, Djaq and Will are never going to be comfortably far away from the Crusades and this chapter explores that. It's nothing graphic or gory, but it _is_ a little dark and it _does_ deal with death—fair warning.

Disclaimer: The characters of BBC's Robin Hood are the property of… the BBC. I don't claim any ownership, nor am I making any illegal money from this story.

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o…o

They rode well into the afternoon—Will was more comfortable on his horse now than he was at first. He didn't panic when she started moving faster, and he could actually concentrate on _other things_ besides not falling off, so he could talk with Djaq. His mare—he named her Lady Daisy, which Djaq thought was the silliest name in the world—was patient enough not to throw him around like a rag doll.

He enjoyed these rides with her, just the two of them and the horses, away from Acre and the cultural rules that dictated much of their behaviour there. When they were surrounded by people, in the house or in the city itself, there was an expected code of behaviour that forced them—and, in particular, _her—_to act a certain way. She had to be Safiyyah when other people could see them; when they were alone, she was still Djaq. The two were very much separate and different personalities. Safiyyah was the mask she wore because she knew that her countrymen would either not understand or not accept how much she'd changed.

He had _Djaq_ all to himself when they were alone, and they could be alone the longest out on horseback in the desert.

They were so caught up in themselves and each other that they lost track of time. The desert gave way to patches of scrubland, with low trees and bushes and areas of prickly dry grass. There was less sand and more rocks and there were deep crevasses torn in the earth. Djaq, apparently, didn't realize how far they'd come and Will didn't know the land well enough to know where they were; there were scars ripped in the ground here, tracks from horses and men marching, the gravelly sand occasionally revealing a partially-buried piece of war equipment. A shield here, a piece of a spear there, a scrap of chainmail elsewhere—clearly this land had seen soldiers, or maybe some of the fighting. He rode close to her, and they both kept instinctively and highly aware of their surroundings as Djaq turned around for them to make their way back to the city and out of this area.

"I don't like this place," he said in a soft, low voice as he rode as close to her as he could manage without getting tangled in her saddle.

"Me neither," she said, equally quiet. "We are too close to it here—I do not want to be."

He knew what 'it' meant—the war. Acre was an important city, the ports and the traffic that went through it were important for supply lines. For the time being, though, there was a truce, both sides agreeing to let people in and out through the city just so long as the peace talks could continue, and everything was quiet. The war, though, was still around them, never too far from Acre.

They picked up the pace, going at a steady lope, their horse's hooves kicking up rocks and sand in their wake as they went.

And then something stopped Djaq. She pulled back and sat deep, turning her stallion around and heading towards a deep, rocky ditch.

"Where are you going?" He called after her, nearly sliding out of the saddle as he turned Lady Daisy sharply around to follow her.

"I hear something!" She called back.

He didn't even have time to ask what she heard before she approached the rock lip and dismounted, crawling forward to look down. When he caught up and crawled up next to her, he looked around in the ditch—it was deep, ten feet or more, with big rocks jutting out all up the sides that could easily have been used to climb out should someone have fallen in. He had no idea what was going on until he spied what had caught Djaq's eye.

It was a man, crumpled in a heap near the bottom. He wore the distinct tunic and red cross of the Crusaders, but his white tunic had grown dirty and ragged and his ashy-brown hair dishevelled in a rat's nest around his face, which was also dirty and smudged.

"Are you all right?" Djaq called down. When he didn't answer immediately, she called down again, in Arabic and again in French and in another language he didn't understand. One day he'd ask her exactly _how many_ languages she spoke, but this was most certainly _not_ the time.

"What—what?" The man croaked back up. "What oddness are you barking up there?"

"Well, he is English," she said softly, just for him to hear. Then she called again. "Are you hurt down there? How long have you been there?"

"A while, I think. Dunno, days. My leg—it hurt a while ago, but now I cannae feel much." The man took a swig from a skin that probably _didn't_ contain water. "Thanks be to God someone has come!"

Djaq sat up and began to climb down to him. "Come on, Will," she said. "Help me get him out."

The man's thanks evaporated as soon as he got a good look at his rescuer.

"Saracen!" He barked. "Don't touch me! I don't want ye workin' witchiness on me!" He tried to swat her away from him, but was weak and tired from being injured and alone there for days that he didn't have the strength.

Will knew the look on her face as she went right into her physician's mode, giving him orders to distract her patient while she went to work on his injured leg. He held the man up by the shoulders with one hand and draped his cloak across his chest so he couldn't see what she was doing, as per her orders.

"Wha's she doin' down there?" He grunted.

"It's fine," he reassured him. "She's trying to help you."

"But what's she _doing?_ I don't feel nothin'."

"He will soon," she whispered. "Be careful."

"It's gotta be witchcraft," he continued. "You know how those people are. Crafty and steely and they don't play fair." He paused to look once at Will. "Where'd she kidnap you from? She keepin' you in a hah-reem?"

He didn't know whether to be incensed or just to roll his eyes at the insinuation that Djaq was his captor, and that he wasn't travelling with her of his own free will.

"It's not like that at all. And she's only trying to help you."

"I bet she's usin' witchcraft on _you,_ too."

"It's _medicine,_ not witchcraft!"

"Then why'd you turn Saracen, then, eh? You're dressed like 'em. You're travelling with one."

"She's just trying to _help you!_ Mind your manners!"

"Will."

He felt a hand on his arm and she was imploring him with big eyes. "Just talk to him. Distract him, please, I need to do some work here and it will hurt him. And do not pay any attention to what he says about me. He is frightened and I do not blame him—you shouldn't, either."

"But how can you—when he's saying those things about you?"

"I have worked in worse conditions."

He didn't know what to say to that—there wasn't really anything he _could_ say to it—so he did his best to distract the man as Djaq went back to work.

"What's your name?" He asked the man.

"Gregory," he said. "Gregory Over-Bridge."

"I'm Will. Where are you from?"

"Lincoln—what's going on down there?"

"Shush, it's nothing. Just keep talking. D'you have family?"

"I'm not married."

"So? You had to come from somewhere. Brothers, sisters?"

"I have a sister."

"What's her name?"

"Mary—she's already married to some smith in the village…"

And on and on it went—the man struggled against the manipulation of his leg, howled occasionally and used what was left of his strength to hurl insults at Djaq—witch, sorceress, filthy monster. She kept a level head and paid no attention to him, her mind completely on her work, and Will, too, tried to ignore the horrible things that came out of his mouth.

Every so often, he'd peek over his cloak to see what she was doing. She'd taken the man's flask, with some kind of strong-smelling alcohol in it, and used it to clean the nasty broad cut on his knee. She cut strips of cloth right from her tunic with her knife, with little care for the expensive fabric or the colourful embroidery on the hem, and wrapped the scraps around his leg for bandages.

The blood and the gaping cut made a cold shiver run right up the back of his spine, so he stopped looking. After what seemed like ages, she stood up.

"Do you have enough strength to lift yourself up?" She asked Gregory.

He just grunted.

Will sighed. "Can you pick yourself up?" He asked.

He answered him. "Maybe with my arms—the leg's throbbing. It hurts worse now than when she started! What'd she do to it? She made it worse a-purpose, didn't she?"

He bit his lip, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. If Djaq wasn't taking any offense to any of this, then he shouldn't either.

But he couldn't help but bristle.

Why were all of the Crusaders this way? Why did they see all Saracens as sorcerers and evil people, just because they were different and they didn't understand them? Of course, the men who came here to fight were probably unnerved by the Saracens simply because they were the 'enemy'—and the Saracens often thought the same about the Europeans, and were afraid or outright hateful of them. And of him.

And yet she'd let him sling insults at him and helped him all the same. He didn't know if he'd ever have the self-control to do that without having the very real desire to sabotage the man's leg.

Which was probably why he wasn't a physician.

He helped Djaq pull the man out of his rocky prison and hoisted him onto her stallion's back as she ordered him to. They both stayed on the ground, leading their horses forward on foot.

"Where are we going?" He asked.

"There is no more I can do for him here—if I can get him to a field hospital, they can do more for him and then help him find his regiment."

"Do you know how to _find_ a field hospital?"

"We will find one—or _they_ will find _us."_

He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.

The sand under their feet was hard to walk in and slowed them considerably. And then, gradually, it gave way to greener land and low shrubs, and then trees. An 'oasis', she'd told him that these green areas were called, little islands of water and lush green land in a sea of sand. It was here that they found what they were looking for.

The improvised field hospital was bigger than he thought it would have been, and sturdily built for what Djaq had told him was a temporary structure. It was busy, with men running in and out and through the tents. There were men outside, too—they were hurt, Will realized as they drew closer with increasing urgency. Djaq must have realized that something was going on, and without even asking anybody any questions she jumped right into the fray.

"Come with me!" She ordered, converting once again into her physician's training. He followed her obediently—she knew what to do here. This was her element.

He felt… awed and sickened at the same time. The men outside the hospital were variously injured, some sporting cuts and flesh wounds, and others with more serious injuries. She went along the lines of men with the other physicians, inspecting their injuries and yelling out orders to the other men around her—he had no idea what they were saying, but from what he could gather she was telling the other physicians what the injuries were before moving on to the next man.

She jumped back and forth from one language to another effortlessly, speaking Arabic to some patients, and English, and French.

People moved dizzingly fast and chaotic around him. Someone had taken their horses and put them in a pen and another person took Gregory into the hospital, probably to see to his wounds, but he didn't really consciously remember any of it happening what with all of the chaos around him.

It was crazy. His head spun.

He felt uncommonly useless here. He knew nothing of medicine and couldn't do anything to help. He didn't even _dare_ ask Djaq or anybody else what was going on.

"Stay close," she told him as she passed him. "If you stand still too long here, and they will assume you are dead."

"What's going—?"

"These men have just been brought here. There was a battle not too far off—they are the casualties. I am trying to decide who needs help soonest and who can wait."

Then she squeezed past him and went on to the next man waiting to be seen.

He followed her closely, occasionally offering reassurance to the English soldiers that he could talk to. Other than that, there was little else he could do besides stay out of the way and offer pieces of cloth for bandages.

He'd never seen her work like this before. In England, she always took her time with her patients, talked to them and made them feel at ease as best as she could. But there was little time for that here—there were so many injured men to see and so few physicians to see to them that she had to go from one to another in seconds. She was fast and decisive, inspecting the men for injuries and assessing them, shouting her diagnosis back to the other physicians, and moving on quickly.

One man was lying down on his stomach in the dirt, his tunic blood-stained. Under the dirt and dried blood on his skin, he was pale. He didn't look good. Djaq came to him and bent over him briefly, her hand on the side of his neck, and then she moved past him without doing anything else.

"What about him?" Will asked her carefully.

"There is nothing we can do for him."

"You're not even going to _try_ to help him?" He knelt by the man's side.

"Will—he is done—"

But he didn't listen. He tried to turn the man over, but he was heavy and dead weight. The front of his tunic was soaked with blood, so much so that the cross on his chest was nearly indistinguishable. There was blood in his mouth and his nose, his eyes were open and unblinking and just as pale as his grey-white face. His head lolled back.

It startled him, and he let go of the man's shoulders and dropped him back on the ground. He landed with a dull_ thud,_ like a big sack of grain.

He didn't know what it was—he'd seen injury and death before, it was nothing new to him, but for some reason it made him feel sick and dizzy and ill. He became suddenly and intensely aware of the smells of blood and unwashed men and old injuries and the reek of death all around him. It was previously unnoticed, but became overpowering.

His stomach lurched.

He stumbled over his feet and legs and ran behind a clump of shrubs and violently threw up the contents of his stomach.

For a long time, he stood gulping breaths of air and trying to make his guts sit still. He held on to a skinny palm tree, the only thing that kept him from crumpling into a heap on the ground. It was… _horrible._

A cool hand rested on the back of his neck and a skin of water was thrust into his hands. He rinsed his mouth with the first few mouthfuls and drank the rest.

"Thank you," he croaked. "I don't know what came over me."

Djaq was silent for a few seconds before she said quietly, "I threw up the first time I saw it, too. You never _really_ get used to seeing so much death."

He was shivering.

"I am sorry you have to see this." She gently stroked his hair.

A few more moments passed before he stopped trembling and stood up.

"Will you be all right?"

"I think so."

Even though he was about as useful to the physicians and their hospital as a girdle, he went back into the chaos anyway. He tentatively walked towards the dead man he'd seen only moments before. He still lay on the ground, right where he'd left him. There was too much to do right now for anybody to bother moving the dead bodies out of the way.

He stood over him a moment, no longer feeling sick and more sad than anything else. He knelt at his side and tugged his cloak out from under him. It was just as dirty as the rest of his clothes, ragged at the bottom with a burned spot on the corner. It was woollen, just like his own old English clothes were. He spread it over the body, covering his face.

It was the only thing he _could_ do. Cover their bodies, and to let them have _some_ dignity in death. He covered the bodies of the fallen Saracen soldiers, too. If even their magical physicians were unable to help them, it was the least he could do to let them rest in peace.

Djaq brought him into the hospital, not wanting him to be too far from her or get lost in the chaos.

Inside was almost worse than outside.

He watched with a morbid fascination as wounds were sewn up and strange-smelling combinations of herbs and oils were applied. Broken arms and legs were splinted with wood and bound tightly with long strips of cloth. There were cries of men in pain or afraid or both as the physicians worked on their charges.

They worked quickly in here, too. Some of the men stayed still—either because they trusted the physicians or because they were too weak to fight back—but some of them fought the people who were trying to help them. Some of the physicians began pulling Will aside to talk to the ones who wouldn't hold still.

"It's all right," he tried to reassure them one after another. "It's all going to be fine, I promise. They're not trying to hurt you—they'll help you, but you have to lie still."

Some of them, like Gregory, thought he wasn't there of his own free will. One by one, he assured the wounded soldiers that they were in no danger, and one by one they calmed down enough to let the doctors do what they needed to do.

There was a lot of blood, some men with massive gashes in their flesh that cut all the way down to the white gleam of bone. Others had wounds that had clearly been untended for a long time, and had grown black and green and oozing foul-smelling pus. It didn't bother any of the physicians—they saw this sort of thing all the time—but it made him feel queasy all over again. The only reason he knew he wouldn't get sick again was because he had nothing left in his belly to bring up. But he never let the injured men know that their wounds made him ill. As long as _he_ didn't show any fear or disgust, _they_ would believe everything he said.

At least, that was what he kept telling himself.

Gradually, he made his way back to Djaq. She was perched by a low table covered in linen, with a young soldier on his back before her. She looked tired.

"Are you all right?" He asked her.

She didn't answer. She was checking over her patient, her fingers on his neck and her ear against his chest. Now that he was closer, he realized how young the wounded soldier was.

He was just a young boy. He had freckles all over his fair cheeks and white-blonde hair—he probably had blue eyes, too, but they were closed. His tunic was too big for him, hitched up around his skinny waist with his belt. The mail underneath it hung baggy and loose on too-thin arms and legs.

Round face. Fuzz on his cheeks and chin.

A baby soldier.

His breath caught in his throat.

"My god," Will breathed. "He's just a kid."

"I know," she replied.

"He's like my little brother—he can't be more than sixteen years old."

She frowned and dragged the soldier's tunic down and pressed an ear to his bare chest. Then she sat up, and wiped the blood off the side of her face, and shook her head.

"He will never see seventeen," she whispered.

Silence.

"He's dead?"

She nodded, and began to wrap the body up in the cloth underneath him. She covered him up, but he couldn't look away from that round baby face. He was just a little boy, coming to fight people he'd never met before and die alone and un-mourned in a strange land on the other side of the world that he would otherwise have had nothing to do with. They didn't even know his name, or where he came from. Somebody, somewhere, was going to miss him—he was somebody's son and somebody's brother and maybe even somebody's sweetheart, but they would never know what happened to him.

A nameless baby soldier.

The blood drained from his head. He felt very dizzy and extremely lightheaded, and the whole hospital around him began to spin, and then there was nothing. He didn't know what was going on at the time, but later Djaq told him that he'd fainted.

o…o

The physicians worked all the way up until it was too dark to see their patients, and even a little beyond that with torches lighting the tent. They only stopped when the torches began to ignite areas of the canvas tent, causing short bursts of excitement as anybody who wasn't already occupied rushed to smother the flames before the entire hospital went up in smoke.

In the light of the little alarming brush fires in the tent walls, the hospital area was cleaned—bloody sheets and cloths taken to be soaked and cleaned, instruments boiled in great kettles of water outside, and the grisly pile of sawed-off severed limbs was carted off somewhere else, presumably to be buried along with the dead. They just dug pits a mile or so outside of the hospital, someone told him, and the dead were thrown into mass graves and hastily buried. Sometimes an imam said a prayer over the remains, but other than that no precautions were taken for a proper burial. He shuddered and then pushed the thoughts from his mind, forcing himself to concentrate on making it out of the surgery and into the improvised sleeping quarters.

"You have well done," one of the physicians told him in halting English. "You are… a good man." The man then patted him on the shoulder and smiled. It was a tired smile and it wavered quickly, but it was a genuine smile all the way to the man's sunken, tired eyes.

"_Sookran,"_ he replied. "Thank you."

Now everything was quiet; the soldiers were tucked into cots for the night while the other physicians took turns walking up and down the rows of beds to keep an eye on them. The rest of them—the physicians and the others who worked in the hospital—were collapsed into sleeping pallets on the ground, exhausted. Most of them were probably asleep before they even hit the ground. There was soup for those who were hungry, but they were all too tired to bother with such frivolous things as food.

Will held a cool wet cloth against the back of his head where he'd hit it when he fainted earlier. There was a tender little lump there where he struck the corner of a table, but otherwise he felt all right. The throbbing headache had stopped, at least, and now there was just a dull and steady ache.

The night was cold—it was much warmer during the day when the sun was out, but at night it was almost as cold as it was in England. His thin Saracen clothes didn't warm him as much as he would have liked; he was covered in his cloak and longed for a blanket, but all of the blankets were being used by the wounded soldiers and there were none left for anybody else. So he curled his legs up to his chest and tried to keep warm that way.

It was too dark to go back to Acre now, and even if it _wasn't_ he was too exhausted to do anything but fall onto a bedroll, grateful for even that thin pad on the ground.

He was tired, but he couldn't sleep. He'd spent part of the afternoon on a cot with the recovering wounded soldiers after he fainted, and once the physicians decided he was all right he went back to where they were working on the soldiers. He helped carry the men inside who couldn't take themselves and counselled the ones who were afraid. There was nothing else he could do, but at least he felt a little less useless.

But now, every time he closed his eyes, blood and gore and infected wounds and death flashed on the insides of his eyelids. He saw the contorted faces of men in pain and smelled the tang of blood, and, in particular, he kept seeing the pale and lifeless face of the dead boy-soldier. It got to the point where he didn't dare close his eyes for fear of seeing any more of those images.

He heard footsteps in the dark, and a small pale figure flopped down onto the pallet next to him. It was Djaq. He could just see her there—she was limp as a piece of wet linen.

"Are you all right?" He whispered.

"I think so." She turned to him and in the dark he saw her smile. She looked just as exhausted as the rest of them. "How did you like your first day in hell?"

"I'll let you know once I can think about it without getting sick."

"That good, hm?" She sat up on one elbow. "For what it is worth… I did not get used to it for a long time."

"At least you could _do_ something. I was… useless and scared."

"You were not useless. To be honest, I spent more of my first days getting sick than I did helping patients. You were more help than you thought you were—and you did far better than I ever could have."

Despite himself, he felt his lips curl up in a smile. That was an incredibly high compliment, coming from her. "Really?"

Nod. "Without any training at all, you seem to have a natural talent for calming patients. Most of _us_ do not even do that—sometimes we are too busy looking at the wounds to notice the person attached to them."

Pause.

She leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek. "Thank you."

Then she rolled back onto her back and sighed.

He felt a swell of pride in his chest at her words. He hadn't really noticed that he'd been doing _anything_ to help, but Djaq clearly noticed that he was. For her to say that he could do something she couldn't…

"I sent word back to Acre for Bassam, so he knows we are not coming back until morning."

"Did you tell him why?"

She snorted. "No. I do not need him to worry for me more than he already has—telling him that we spent the night in a field hospital knitting soldiers back together would just scare him to death."

He lay there quietly in the dark for a while. He wondered if Djaq's adoptive uncle didn't even know that she spent time as a battlefield physician. He didn't seem to know that that was what she spent some of her time away from Acre doing—though he doubted the man would want to hear it or like what he heard if anybody told him.

Ignorance is bliss, he thought absently. Knowing that Djaq had lived every day of her life in these conditions for several years made him worry retrospectively for her safety. However did she survive it? He had no idea—he just knew that she must have been the strongest person in the world.

Around him in the darkened tent, men were asleep and snoring away. He could hear things outside—guards making sure nobody would ambush the hospital, night-dwelling animals waking up. Beyond that was the desert, and in it could be… _anything._ Lost Crusaders, Saracen soldiers, and others. Probably some of the less-than-savoury characters prowling the desert _looking_ for the lost soldiers to prey upon them. And maybe come into the hospital.

He shivered again, but this time it wasn't from the cold.

"D'you suppose there could be bandits out there?" He asked.

"If they are good little bandits they are," she murmured, sounding half-asleep. Then she sat up and turned to him again. "Are you frightened?"

He didn't answer. He didn't want to go to sleep for fear of the thoughts and images bouncing around his head—the horrors he'd seen today and his fear that something was lurking just outside the hospital.

She got up and waddled on her knees over to his bedroll. She nudged him to make room and lay down at his back with her arms around his shoulders from behind.

"I cannot promise I will be a reliable protector if anything goes awry in the night," she sighed sleepily against his ear. "But at least you know you are not alone."

Then she kissed his cheek and nestled her face against his neck and, with one final sigh, almost immediately fell asleep.

He slept with her there, and the nightmares never came. He dreamed, once again, of the forest—the place he would always return to in his mind.

o…o

0…0…0…0…0

Will gets baptism by fire at the field hospital. He'd never have seen Djaq work like this before in this kind of environment (to my knowledge), so it would either scare him or he'd be absolutely floored because he was so impressed. I went with a mix of both. He hasn't anaesthetized yet, either, so he still bleeds for the injured. I used my sometime beta, the lovely MissWed, as a guinea pig for the more intense scenes and I trust her—so I hope the chapter as a whole doesn't disappoint! Not so much fluff in this story, I'm afraid.

I'll see you in next week's update. Same Bat-time, same Bat-station. Those of you who decide to leave feedback are _always_ much appreciated.


	4. Acre

Here's the fourth chapter. I had an incredibly bad week, but posting always makes me happy. After all, someone somewhere will be enjoying what I've written—and that makes me feel better. Anyway, this is a Will-centric chapter. Not sure if I got all of the angst across as well as I'd've liked to, but hopefully it gets the point across!

Disclaimer: Djaq and Will are not my property, though goodness knows I've tried.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

The quiet, uneventful life that resumed upon returning to Acre was more than welcome for both of them. The morning after they spend that night at the field hospital, Djaq still felt an obligation to stay and check up on the patients she'd seen the day before. The other physicians, grateful for her help, gave them food and refilled their water skins before sending them on their way back to the city on their newly-rested horses. Among the patients she checked on was Gregory, the English Crusader who'd been so thoroughly nasty to her the day before.

"How are you feeling?" She'd asked him.

"Much better," he said. Then he'd fidgeted nervously, looking like he was contemplating saying something. "I… I should thank you. For helping me. And I'm sorry for what I said."

"It is all right. You were frightened."

"And you helped me anyway."

"I did."

"Thank you," he said again.

Again, she shrugged it off.

"Once you are well enough to leave, they will help you find your regiment and you can go back to them."

And then they'd left for the ride back to Acre.

Will was happy to be back—he never thought he'd be _glad_ to be back in the city where he couldn't understand the people around him, in this too-big house with all of the servants and the staff who didn't like him. But it was, at least, safer.

Bassam said nothing of their time missing; either he didn't want to know what they were doing or he suspected they were doing something _else._ Either way, it wasn't discussed and he said nothing to them about it aside from welcoming them back.

That was nearly a fortnight ago. And now that he was finished being relieved that he didn't have to worry about blood and war and dying soldiers, he went back to feeling bored.

He missed his friends. He was just so… so _lonely._ It was not for the first time, and undoubtedly not for the last, that he found himself slumping quietly in the aviary by himself, wishing more than anything that he was back in the forest.

At least in the forest he could _do_ something. Or _find_ something to do. And if there was nothing he could do or find to do, then he could at least _talk_ to somebody. But here, when Djaq wasn't about, there was _nobody_ to talk to and _nothing_ to distract him from his loneliness. In his desperation, he could well have been content talking with _Much._

He sighed sadly. This beautiful house—grander than anything he'd ever seen in England—was starting to feel like a prison. The big airy rooms and the courtyard outside were the only places he could go, and he felt trapped. The world ended at the threshold. It was an uncomfortable new feeling for somebody who had spent his life wandering the meadows and forests of Nottingham and Scarborough.

He flicked absently at a bit of wood with his knife. This one had become a great snarling bear while he'd been lost in his thoughts. Bears were something else he didn't see here—though the only places he'd really seen them in England was at fairs and festivals. The animals here were smaller, but no less dangerous. Lions that prowled the deserts; great snakes armed with deadly poisons; tiny little insects and spiders that looked small and harmless enough but apparently could kill people—just about everything _in_ this place was trying to kill people. At least with bears and wolves, he knew what was coming.

Working took his mind off of things and kept him from thinking _too much_ about everything. He found that thinking meant remembering, and remembering depressed him. If he thought, he'd remember the people he left behind—Luke, and Auntie Annie in Scarborough; poor Robin; Much and his whinging; John. Allan. He missed Allan so much. There was something weird in the way he felt about Allan—it was a weird kind of not-love that was something more that friendship and distinctly different from brotherhood. It was just _Allan,_ he'd decided. There was no other way to explain it. And he missed him sorely, more than almost anybody else in England.

So he worked. And worked. And worked _compulsively_ and produced figurines and miniatures and little wooden beads and bangles faster than he'd've ever thought possible. He just gave them away when they were finished—to the household servants and staff in Bassam's house and the bustling people he saw in the marketplace, who always looked surprised and shocked that someone had just stopped to _give_ them something. Children, being inherently trusting and maybe a little naïve, didn't mind seeing him about and had begun to figure out that the tall Englishman with the pale eyes was a good place to find toys. Just as he'd done in Nottingham, he sat by and watched the happy faces of the children he'd given the toys to as they played with them. It was just one of those things that reminded him of _home._

When he made the decision to stay here with Djaq, he'd accepted the reality that this world was going to be completely alien and different from anything he'd ever experienced before in his life. But it was quite a leap from just accepting it and actually _living_ that reality, day in and day out. The days melted into weeks melted into months. He didn't even know what month it was—their days and months were different here—or exactly how long they'd been here, though he guessed it might have been three months now.

It was harder than he'd ever imagined it could have been, and part of him—the really horrid and disgustingly selfish part—wished he hadn't stayed at all. After all, which was worse? Living minus the one person he loved? Or living in a strange land minus the _five_ people who had become his family?

He looked around and sighed. Notched walls rose up on every side of him, with the pigeons in their little roosts, some cooing at him and others just sitting there. They were just as caged as he was.

For a few seconds, he thought to let them out and let them fly away—to be with their mates again, from whom some were separated, and to raise their little baby chicks in the wild, far away from cages. Except he knew that the birds would just fly right back to Bassam and his aviary again if they _were_ freed; that was, after all, what they were trained to do. But for a little while, at least, they'd have the freedom that he didn't.

He imagined the forest, lush and green and full of magic and shadows and teeming with life. The markets were the same, just as busy in England as here, even though they didn't have the same fine silks and precious spices to sell and trade. It was always loud—braying donkeys and loud cows and annoying goats that had to be watched every second or they'd eat something right out of a vendor's stall, and the noise of people arguing and bartering and catching up with friends they hadn't seen since _last _week.

It had always been smoky in the markets, he remembered. He had no idea why.

And _crowded,_ too. The streets were narrower there than they were here, but just as many people and merchants had to crowd into them. It wasn't all that uncommon to get trodden on if he wasn't paying attention. Once, in trying not to step on anybody himself, Will had gone too close to a vendor's stall—the hood of his cloak caught on it, and he tripped trying to free himself. He bashed the side of his face against somebody's water jug and bled sluggishly into his hand and onto his clothes all the way back to the forest, where Much promptly fainted from seeing him and Djaq had to tend to them _both_.

Djaq was always taking care of them whenever they hurt themselves, which was, in fact, quite often. They were a hopeless bunch sometimes, and she scolded them for it like a mother scolding her sons. But the thought of being alone with Djaq with her gentle, strong physician's hands whatever part he'd managed to injure made being hurt all worthwhile. Once or twice he thought, preposterously, of possibly accidentally-on-purpose getting hurt just so she would touch him.

It was funny, he thought absently to himself as he carved claws into his angry wooden bear. He used to think that nothing in the world could equal the pain and loneliness that was his pining for the beautiful Saracen woman. To live every day so close to her and have her never know how he felt about her, he thought he could never feel anything quite that crushingly lonely. Now she knew of and reciprocated his love, and he should have been happy, but instead they were here, in _her_ homeland with _her_ family, and he felt even lonelier than he had before.

He loved her, would never take back those tender words, but he didn't want to have to choose between the woman he loved and the people and places that were so important to him.

The bear in his hand was finished now. It looked like he felt—snarling and frustrated. He stood up and tucked it into his belt-pouch. Time to go for a walk, clear his head. Just because Acre and this house were his prisons didn't mean that he had to sit still in them.

o…o

Despite having to communicate almost entirely via pantomime, and his two words of Arabic, Will found that he rather like the marketplace. People weren't so different once he stopped thinking so gloomily. The marketplace was just as crowded, and just as loud. It was curiously smoky here, too, and as dusty as the Nottingham market was muddy. Even though he couldn't understand most of what was said, he knew there were friends meeting in the market to talk, and vendors arguing with patrons over the quality of their goods. Camels grunted and mules brayed—and there were _plenty_ of obnoxious, hungry goats chomping on anything they could close their teeth around.

Children chased each other around his legs before disappearing somewhere into the marketplace. He used to do that with his brother in the marketplace when they were little and times were better—it was easier to hide from one another in a crowded market and made a chasing game all the more interesting. He remembered driving his mother absolutely crazy doing it. Just as these children were doing now, he realized, as an exasperated-looking woman stomped by after them, shouting, and no doubt threatening to sell them to the gypsies just like _his_ mother used to threaten _him._

Even though he wasn't really a part of this bustle and busyness, it made him feel less alone and less trapped. At least there were _people_ here, and by now he was brown enough from the sun to be largely unnoticed just so long as he didn't open his mouth.

He walked aimlessly for a while, just enjoying the sights and the happy chaos and that feeling of being, if not _welcome,_ at least accepted. It was a feeling that he was entirely unaware of until it was gone, and now he was glad to have some of it back again.

His walk took him around to the mosque in the middle of the city, and then back again—he didn't dare go much further than that, lest he lose his way. Acre was a big city and all the houses and streets looked mostly the same to him, so he would rather have not taken that risk.

So back around he went.

When he came to the woodcutter's stall, he stopped to look. He liked seeing what the different artisans could do with their chosen materials, and wood especially gave him new ideas and made him think of new ways to work. Everything was ornate—tables, chairs, bedposts, chests—anything that someone might put in their house had been carved and ornamented in some way. Will had never have thought to do that in England. Tables and chairs and boxes and chests were just basic things that people needed, not anything to take too much time or effort making 'pretty'—except for the obscenely wealthy—and now he sort of wished he had. Just because something was supposed to be useful didn't mean it couldn't also be nice to look at.

He picked up a ladies comb with leaves and flowers carved along the teeth. He should learn how to do this—he could start a whole new way of doing things in England when they got back, whenever that was. He studied it a long time, the curves and the dips and the detail. Whoever did this must've had quite a few different tools for the job, to make all the little tiny details and the sharp lines. All he'd ever used for carving was his knife, the same one he ate and did everything else with—which occasionally led to him finding flakes of wood in his dinner.

Maybe he should get another knife.

Or something.

Somebody slapped the back of his hand and he dropped the comb, startled. The vendor—a young man not much older than he was—sat on the other side of the stall, frowning at him and scolding.

"I'm sorry!" He said quickly, then desperately tried to remember how to say something in Arabic. _"Assif, assif! _Sorry!"

He held his hands up to show that he was unarmed, and hadn't taken anything.

The man stopped scolding and leaned across the table between them, studying him closely with steely yellow-brown eyes. Will's first instinct was to back away and get the stranger out of his personal space, but he stayed put.

"You are Englishman," he said in slow, halting English, heavily accented.

He wasn't sure if the man was just making some kind of an observation or if he was preparing to call the soldiers on him or what. He didn't look angry, just… curious.

Will returned the favour, answering in Arabic, _"Na'am,"_ for 'yes'.

Pause.

"You can speak English," he added, redundantly.

"I learn small bit. From Crusaders."

Another pause.

"You speak mine language."

He managed to communicate to the man that he spoke even less of _his_ language. Then he reached into his belt-pouched and pulled out the wooden bear.

"I do what you do," he told him, the simplest way he could manage.

He took the bear and looked closely at it, his thick dark eyebrows raised. Will couldn't be sure, but he thought the man looked impressed. Then he looked up at him.

"What are you called?"

"I'm… I'm Will."

"Am—I am—Irfan."

He was surprised and almost amazed at what had just happened. For whatever reason, Ifran wasn't afraid or wary of him. He talked to him, in _English._ It was the first conversation he'd had in days with anybody who wasn't Bassam or Djaq, and it felt good. The two men had, at least, woodwork as some common ground. He couldn't help it—he smiled. _That,_ he knew, was the same in both languages.

The corners of the other man's eyes crinkled and he gestured to Will to come around and sit down. When he hesitated, Ifran held up the bear.

"You will… teach this?" He asked. Then he picked up the comb. "And I will give this."

He was offering a trade—to teach him how to carve something like his wooden bear in exchange for the comb that Will had been admiring.

"I will teach," he assured slowly, but he put the comb back on the table. "But you don't have to give me anything." He didn't need anything, and in truth the company would be more than enough in exchange.

He wasn't sure that Ifran understood or not, but he plopped a sturdy piece of dark wood into his lap.

"Teach?"

He grinned. "All right."

It was late afternoon by the time he wandered back to Bassam's house, feeling _much_ better than he had when he'd left. He walked through the courtyard and saw Djaq there, leaning against an archway with her arms crossed.

"I was wondering when you would come back," she said. "Another hour or two and I would have gone out looking for you."

"I'm not _that_ helpless, you know," he reminded her. "I just wanted to get out, go for a walk. I felt a little crazy locked up in here all day."

"I know. I do not mean to worry so much but I cannot help myself."

"Afraid I'd gotten lost?"

"I was afraid somebody might kidnap you for a male harem," she said. He snorted at such silliness. "I would not rule it out, you know—you are too lovely not to notice."

One thing that he alternately loved and hated about Djaq was that she could say just about anything and keep a straight face—it came in handy when telling an outright lie to some suspicious character in the forest or in one of the villages they frequented. Sometimes it also made for comedic deadpan, and other times it made him have to think long and hard about whether she was serious about something or not.

Now was one of those latter times. It was only when the corners of her mouth turned up that he realized she was joking. He sighed in relief—she _wasn't_ cross.

"I cannot believe that you _believed_ that," she said as she began to giggle at him. Then she looped her arms around his neck and rested her forehead against his chest and sighed.

"Long day?"

Nod.

"I should retire from medicine and be a dancing girl for a living. It will be much less of a strain on my nerves and my patience."

"You used to say that in the forest, too," he reminded her. "Until Allan started saying he thought that might not be a half-bad idea."

She used to threaten the same thing, occasionally, when the strain of their life in the forest and the madness of the people they lived around and the work they did and the apparent gracelessness of some people got too much for her. She told them that she was leaving the forest and running away to become a dancing girl and she would never have to see or speak to any of them again—and then Allan started expressing interest in seeing her dressed in one of those costumes and 'wriggling about', as he put it, and she stopped that particular threat.

She sighed again.

"It was that bad?" He asked.

Another nod. "I shall tell you later. But for now," here she paused and took him by the hand, tugging him toward the house. "Bassam is not here and we can do whatever we like until he comes back tomorrow morning."

He very much liked the sound of that. "Oh, really?"

"Yes—and everybody has promised to pretend not to hear anything."

His eyes narrowed and he grinned at her and he could swear he saw her shiver just ever so slightly as he looked at her. Then he hoisted her up and threw her over his shoulder and loped up the stairs—she giggled helplessly the whole way to the room until the door slammed behind them.

It was the dark and very early hours of the morning when he woke up and groggily forced himself to get out of bed and pick his things up off the floor. Usually Djaq was the one to wake up ungodly early to sneak back to her own room—so that nobody would catch them in bed together—but they'd stayed in _her_ room tonight and so _he_ had to navigate the halls in the dark.

He hated this. He hated that she was so afraid of her uncle's reaction that she didn't dare let them stay the whole night together for fear of being caught. He didn't like waking up all alone, with just a little dip in the sheets to remind him that she'd been there—or clumsily roaming the halls so early in the morning to collapse into a cold and empty bed. It was lonely; even before they were _sleeping_ together he was never too far from her at night. She was always there, just across the fire, and all he'd had to do was sit up and he could see her.

But not in Acre.

He understood her apprehension—these were people she'd known from childhood, she told him once, and the thought of being discovered _by them_ just felt wrong to her. He supposed he would have felt much the same way if, say, his brother or Matilda the wise-woman, or someone else he'd known since he was a boy, walked in on them. He understood, if only a little bit, but that didn't stop him from resenting the fact that they couldn't stay together all night.

He pulled his trousers back on and hopped around on the shockingly cold tiled floor before he found his sandals. His shirt wasn't on the floor or under the bed, so he figured it must have been tangled up in the bedclothes somewhere. He searched through the mass of cloth before he found it and pulled it on over his head. He paused there to have a look at her—she was sleepy and peaceful, on her stomach with one arm under her pillow and the other on the empty space where he'd been sleeping. She clenched the empty sheet in her hand, then let go.

He should probably go now, before he decided to Hell with what anybody else thought and he was going to _stay_ in that room with her. He turned to pick up his belt and pouch and scan the room to make sure he had everything.

When he stood to leave, he was stopped by a firm grip in the back of his shirt.

"_Hurk!"_ He startled, then choked, and then fell back to the floor. He turned to see Djaq still in the same place she was a moment ago, her eyes still closed, but with a little smile on her lips and a death-grip on the back of his shirt.

She opened one eye.

"Where are _you_ going?"

"Back… to my room?" He said slowly. "It's nearly morning and you don't want us caught."

She dropped his shirt and pushed herself up on her elbows. "Stay here," she murmured. "Please?"

He sat on the edge of the bed. "Even though we'll get caught?"

"Let the others think what they will. I am a grown woman and I do not need their permission or approval to do anything. It is time for them to stop thinking of me as a little girl, I think. And anyway," she paused to pull him down by his shirt. "I dislike sleeping all alone in the cold."

He grinned and kissed her gently. Then he stripped back down to bare skin and climbed into bed with her, and there he stayed until she woke him for breakfast. The next night, he didn't even bother going to his own room at all.

o…o

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I hope the ending fluff-scene satisfied your fluff-quota for the day. There really isn't a whole lot in the way of romance in this story, which for me is a little unusual. It's a more serious fic than I'm used to writing, but then… the subject matter is a little more serious. The little flashback to Will getting injured in the marketplace was taken from an interview with Harry Lloyd, in which he stated that he'd hurt himself on the set by catching his hood on a stall and hitting his face on a water pitcher. I had to put it in there, just because. Why not?

I'll be back next week with chapter five. Until then, enjoy the read. Feedback is, of course, always greatly appreciated—but never demanded.


	5. Wanderings

Ironic that I'm writing parts of this chapter from the doctor's office. (I don't really count myself as superstitious, but I keep getting painfully ill while writing Djaq/Will stories. Something could be read into this.) I'm glad that the last chapter's angst came across well—I wasn't sure about it, so it's good to know it worked! Gabrielle makes another appearance here, for those of you who wonder about her. Don't worry, you'll find out who she is soon enough. Yes, I'm a mean old lady.

Disclaimer: All of the characters you recognize are most likely not my property—I'm borrowing them from the BBC.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

If there was one thing Djaq had learned from many years with her adoptive 'uncle', it was that Bassam was a master at saying nothing and still managing to get a point across. He always knew exactly how to tilt his head or angle an eyebrow in such away that it transmitted a message directly into her head without him having to even utter a sound. They were mostly disapproving messages. She loved the man dearly, and he spent most of her childhood spoiling her, but he'd always made sure that she and her brother knew when they did something that he didn't like. Just one look was often all it took to put two rambunctious children to rights and make them sit quietly.

But she wasn't a rambunctious child anymore. Far from it. She wasn't the same sixteen-year-old girl who ran away from home so long ago. She didn't even go by the same _name_ anymore. The name that all but Will called her sounded alien to her ears. That person, that Safiyyah girl, was someone different. And while she knew it made her uncle sad that she had so drastically changed, more than that it upset her that he either wouldn't or _couldn't_ accept the person she had become. He had apparently expected her to come back into his home and they would pick up right where they'd left off seven years ago, and was instead surprised to discover a whole new person there.

So he looked disapprovingly at her a lot these days, and she felt incredibly guilty until she remembered that she hadn't _done_ anything that she should feel guilty about. It had certainly been a _shock_ to him when he came home that day and discovered his niece had taken to sleeping with her intended before they were properly married. It was, not for the first time, a reminder of how much the people here still thought of her as a little girl.

Bassam seemed to think that this was a _new_ development. Either he was hopelessly naïve for a man his age, or he was suffering a serious case of denial, but whichever it was, she didn't have the heart to tell him they'd been going at it like rabbits on the ship to Acre and discreetly right under his nose for the last three and a half months.

Still. She didn't like that covert disapproval and disappointment in his face whenever he decided it was time to let her know, once again, how he felt about her decision.

At least he was the only one who made it obvious. The others—Ayla the head servant and all of the household staff and the young men who worked in the aviary—turned a polite blind eye to their activities. Even Khalad had no reaction to it, possibly because Djaq being occupied with Will kept her mostly away from his kitchen and out of his hair.

She sat by herself in the courtyard with her lunch of bread and some of the leftover goat's meat from the night before. She saved her favourite part—a nice big ripe orange—for last. She was glad to be out here, basking in the sun and the cool breeze.

When she wasn't treating patients, she was making medicines and poultices for the ones who would come in later, and the smells of them all mixed together clung to her clothes and her hair. And she'd spent the afternoon treating boils on a Crusader who was on his way through the city—she treated it and told him that they would go away with time and suggested that he have a bath every once in a while. But the Europeans as a whole weren't keen on bathing so she wasn't sure he'd be free of boils for very long.

In her time as a physician—on the battlefield and off—she'd seen more naked men than she cared to remember, most of them at their worst. She was surprised that it hadn't put her off men all together. At least she was never bothered sharing close quarters with the gang in the forest—though they were often far more bothered by _her_ than she was by _them._ She finally had an outburst one day when Much was trying to make her leave their temporary camp so that he could change clothes.

"For goodness sake!" She'd yelled. "Much, I am a physician. I have seen more naked backsides than you will _ever_ see! Unless you have extra limbs you keep hidden under your clothes, there is nothing you could _conceivably_ do that will shock me!"

And that was that; nobody ever complained about Djaq being around when they changed clothes after that day.

She took her shawl down from her hair and sat back, letting the sun warm her face. She'd forgotten how _mild_ winter was—even the warmest summer in England was just a little warmer than this wintry day. Of course, once summer came around she was going to hate it and no doubt poor Will was going to suffer greatly from it.

But for now she was content.

"You look comfortable."

The voice came from behind her, and she tilted her head all the way back to look at Will.

"Hello—do you know you are upside-down?"

"I hadn't noticed, no," he replied, coming around to sit next to her. "Are you all done for the day?"

She shrugged. "It all depends on if somebody turns up or not."

"You never turn anyone away, do you?"

"Not if I can help it."

He paused and toyed nervously with the wooden tag around his neck. He still wore it—he'd _always_ wear it, she knew. It was among the last links he had to England, to home. He fiddled with it whenever he was unsure of something.

"What?" She asked.

"Why… why do you still do it?" His words were slow and cautious.

She frowned. "Do what?"

"The doctoring."

Well—_that_ took her by surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"When we were at the field hospital—it was horrible. How do you still want to be a physician?"

She didn't even have to think about that answer. It just came out. "Because I want to do what physicians are _trained_ to do. Physicians treat sick people—the soldiers are not sick. They are young and healthy and their bodies have been run through by other young, healthy men with weapons."

"Well, then—why did you do it to begin with?"

He was prying, and he knew it. But he wanted to know about her, about the parts of her life that he hadn't been a part of. She couldn't justify keeping things secret from him forever, could she?

She took a deep breath. "I was young once, and fiery and impetuous. I thought that I was doing the right thing—using the knowledge my father gave me to fight what _I_ was told was a war to preserve our land and our faith. Protect it from… invading barbarians." Then she looked down.

In truth she was ashamed now of the things she'd once believed when she was younger and full of blazing fires and had all sorts of ideas and convictions that she'd so very strongly—and, in her opinion, naively—believed in and had more or less forgotten by now. She only had one side of the story and she'd made a blind leap to a conclusion without getting all of the information. Europeans were barbarians to her—they were all filthy and smelly and stupid and they talked in coarse tongues. Almost none of them could read. Some could hardly even talk. It made her feel _superior_ to them because of it. Such thoughts were cruel, she knew now, but not then…

She hadn't known then that many of the Crusaders were just poor men from poor families hoping to eke out a better existence by putting their lives in danger and following their kings and their armies abroad to fight and die in a land they knew nothing about. They weren't properly trained soldiers and most had never even picked up a sword before in their lives. Some even fought with whatever weapons they could improvise because they _had_ no swords, like Robin and the rest of the gang had done.

And the more she learned about them, the more she began to feel for them.

Very quickly, she stopped seeing barbarians and began seeing a lot of scared, homesick young men who had often lived in poverty all of their lives. They were skinny and underfed and dirty and smelly and crawling with lice and she couldn't help but feel sorry for them. All she could do for them was heal their wounds and treat their maladies and make sure they got a good meal or two in their bellies before they went back into the desert to fight and die. Sometimes she saw the same boys and men twice or more, but more often than not, she never saw them again after they left the field hospitals and there was no way for her to know what became of them. She liked to think they went home to see their families again, but she knew that few of them would make it back—most were dead.

The words spilled out of her once again. Once she began talking she found it hard to stop—and he sat there next to her, not saying a word and listening intently to her the way he always did. He was taking it all in, thinking about what she was saying.

"I believed that I was doing something to help my people," she sighed. "It was… _different_ than what I thought it would be. I am not sure what I _did_ expect. But I know that I did _not_ expect to be wading day after day in the blood of boy-soldiers not even old enough to shave yet, standing to my gut in other people's guts while a lot of people that I did not know and never met kept trying to run in and kill us when they were not trying to burn down our hospital. I thought it was a fight for Islam, but I was wrong—and I learned that I was wrong very quickly. So I decided to help however I could. There is no such thing as a _fight_ for _peace. _War is just killing."

She went quiet then. Will was still silent, frowning thoughtfully. All of this was probably still brewing in his mind as he decided what to do with it. He understood—or at least he _hoped_ he understood—that she was a different person when she thought and believed those things.

He was just sitting there and not saying or doing anything. She felt a lance of fear go through her stomach. She'd been partly unwilling to tell him of her past because that would mean reliving the events she'd tried to hard not to think of—the other part of her reluctance came from the fear that her confessions would scare him. It was, after all, a lot of very terrible things. She was wondering if that hadn't happened here. Will Scarlett did not scare easily, but she had just revealed a part of her past that she was both ashamed and herself a little frightened of.

"Did that frighten you?"

Will didn't know what to say or how to answer that. How _could_ he say anything to her that didn't sound insincere or half-hearted? _What_ could he possibly say?

It was a whole new insight into the woman he so loved. He had no idea what she'd gone through in the desert and later on as a slave—a time in her life she absolutely never talked about—but the fact that she'd told him this little bit was enough.

She kept her past largely a secret from him, scared or unsure of herself or of his reaction.

And now he knew why.

It was still something of a shock to hear of her past. She was, as she had told him before, an entirely different person before she left Acre. And from the way she was sitting, with her arms and legs tucked stiffly in place and her lower lip between her teeth, and the way she wouldn't look at him—he could tell she was uncharacteristically frightened of what his reaction might be. She was scared of what he thought of this past persona.

He had trouble imagining Djaq as a youthful and impetuous girl, though he could certainly picture her as holding fast to her beliefs. She was always quietly steadfast in what she thought was right. But the young, fiery girl she described when she talked about her past self wasn't much like the calm and collected woman that he'd always known. Though sometimes, in the heat of battle when all of them ran solely on instinct, and when all of her self-imposed restraints were down, he could see the flash of passion in her eyes and a hint of that fire that once drove her.

Perhaps that was a little bit what she was once like. Age and experience had calmed her from fiery rage to steadily smouldering embers, but it was still there.

He shifted and inched closer to her.

"Not frightened," he told her. "Just… a little surprised."

He saw her visibly relax; she turned to look at him and he continued.

"You couldn't scare me even if you _tried,"_ he said, though he was sure that Djaq had _something_ in her vast repertoire of skills that could successfully terrify him. But his words had the desired effect and she relaxed the rest of the way and smiled.

Oh, that smile. It made him melt.

They were immediately comfortable again. One day, he'd know all of her story and fill in the gaps—but what she'd divulged this afternoon was enough. For now, at least, it would satisfy his curiosity.

He looked down to see her concentrating on what appeared to be a fist-sized orange ball in her lap, picking at the surface with her fingernails and taking flakes of it off.

"What in the world are you doing?" He asked.

"Trying to take the skin off," she said, as if that explained everything. "But it always comes off in the tiniest little pieces when I try to do it."

He realized then that it was a fruit and not a ball.

He was still getting used to the new foods in Acre, and every other week or so he'd be presented with a fruit or vegetable or meat from an unknown animal or some kind of sensationally pungent cheese that he'd never encountered before. He'd begun to realize how startlingly limited his diet had been until he came here. And he was willing to try just about anything provided it was properly dead before coming to the table.

Because of this he was putting on weight. He hadn't noticed it to begin with, until one day while he was bathing—yet _another_ thing he'd had to get used to doing here—when he happened to notice that he could no longer see his ribs jutting out underneath his skin.

Whatever fruit that she had in her lap right now was something new that he hadn't encountered before. The thick bits of bright orange skin that came off smelled sweet and sharp at the same time.

"What is it?"

"Orange."

"I can tell what _colour_ it is, but what _is_ it?"

She snorted and choked briefly, then stopped what she was doing to fold her arms over her knees and laugh softly.

"What?" He demanded.

"That's what it is _called—_an orange."

"They couldn't come up with a better name than that?"

She shrugged. "It is _your_ language, not mine. We call them _burtuqal."_

Pause.

"Oh."

He didn't feel foolish—_not_ knowing a lot of things had become a way of life for him here. Anything he didn't think to ask about himself he found out later out of necessity.

Eventually Djaq gave up trying to peel the thing and instead took out her knife and cut it into sections. The pieces were dripping with sticky juice, and the piece he had leaked all over his hand and into his lap when he bit into it, but it was tasty and sweet and Djaq let him have half of it.

They were rinsing their sticky hands under the spouting head of the lion over the fountain and were about to sneak out of the house and into the city when Layla—the little timid servant girl who was always afraid of him—shuffled into the courtyard. He'd been here all these months and she _still_ eyed him rather nervously. But by now he was used to it, so he backed a few paces away from Djaq to let the girl deliver her message.

He heard his love loose an angry, frustrated growl and turned around just in time to watch Layla run full tilt back into the house.

"Ayla!" Djaq called. "Ayla, I need to speak with you!"

"What's going on?" Will asked. "Is something wrong?"

She sighed. "Only for me."

His face fell. "Someone's here to see you?"

"Yes."

Now it was _his_ turn to sigh, disappointed—no sneaking off with Djaq this afternoon after all.

An older servant woman appeared in one of the doors; she nodded politely to him before coming to stand near Djaq. The old woman was as tall and thin as a heron—she was more than a full head taller than Djaq—with her hair covered by one of the loose hoods that most of the women here wore. Beneath it, her hair had gone pepper-grey and her skin was wrinkly as a dried apple. They were having a hushed argument in Arabic, but Will surprised himself by listening in and understanding enough to get what they were talking about.

"_Why did you let him in? I told you not to!"_ Djaq hissed. _"Tell him I am not here—tell him I am sick—tell him I am _dead!_ Tell him _anything_ you want!"_

He bit his lip and tried not to let on that he'd understood that. Obviously that there was _somebody_ to see her that she didn't want to see—he suspected it was the same man who kept coming back to her for doctoring every other day, each time complaining that he was dying of his maladies.

"_He said he needed help."_

"_The help he needs, I cannot give him!"_

"_You cannot turn him away."_

She grumbled and put her face in her hands. Then she sighed heavily. "All right, all right. I will see to him." Then she turned to Will with an apologetic smile. "I am sorry," she said.

His mouth twitched. "It's all right—nothing you could've helped."

In truth, he _was_ a bit frustrated that she had to go, but he'd never have told her that. He didn't want her to feel needlessly guilty for something she couldn't possibly help. And anyway, he'd see her tonight. Not seeing Djaq during the day was much easier to bear with now that they were sharing a bed at night. It was considerably less lonely, knowing that at the end of the day she'd be sleeping right there next to him.

So instead he went off into the market alone, because he was feeling cooped-up again, and because sometimes Djaq's doctoring could make his stomach turn even from the other side of the house.

Maybe Ifran would be about—Ifran was the only friend he had here aside from Djaq. They managed to communicate with one another between his broken Arabic and Ifran's broken English and a lot of broad gestures and pantomime to get the point across. It worked, at least, and he liked having someone to see in the marketplace. It made him feel just the littlest bit more like he belonged here.

Ifran had a son; he hadn't even realized that the man was married, and then he found out that his wife had died in childbirth and that he was a widower for some years. He'd begun to bring his son with him to the market and was pleased when Will met him for the first time.

That in itself said a lot, and he was touched by it. While few people expressed the same outright hate at _him_ as some people in England showed towards Djaq, there was no shortage of people here who pulled their children close whenever he walked by because they were scared to death of Europeans.

But then, at least they _had_ a reason to be afraid of Europeans from the horrors of the war around them—in England the only reason people disliked or feared Djaq was because she was different.

Ifran's little boy was called Nasir—five years old and curious and he laughed at absolutely everything. In England, he'd used whatever spare time he had to make little toys for the village children—he loved seeing them happy, knowing that adulthood would come soon enough for them and wanting them to have _some_ fun while they were still little—and he liked doing it. He'd taken to doing the same thing here and giving the toys to Nasir. Sometimes his little friends would come along and they'd play with the toys and beg Will to join in, which in turn kept Nasir and the rest of the children out of trouble in the marketplace.

He liked children. They were funny and sweet, and believed everything anybody told them and hadn't been around long enough to have developed a cynical or dismal attitude towards the world. He wasn't sure about having any children of his own, so for now he was content to play with _other_ people's and then give them back when he got tired of them.

He wasn't even sure if he could _be_ a father. Would it come naturally or was it something he was going to have to be taught? And he liked children well enough, but babies were alternately smelly, boring, and loud. The day Rosa, Matilda's girl, had her baby in the camp he had to excuse himself deeper in the forest. He let the others think it was to relieve himself, but really he spent a good long while having dry heaves behind a tree because it was all disgusting. Even after experiencing the field hospital, childbirth remained up at the top of his list of things that made him gag.

Bearing children was also difficult and dangerous and painful; he'd seen enough women die in childbirth, or not long after, and sometimes even _before_ to know that death was a very real threat. He wasn't John and he didn't know much about such matters, but he knew enough to know that it frightened him sometimes. Smaller women, too, had a harder time bearing children and Djaq was quite small-built indeed. He didn't want her to be uncomfortable for so long—or worse, to risk death. Nothing in the world could be worth that.

He shook his head hard. This was silly—all hypotheticals. Nothing to get so scared about.

Having children with Djaq was something they wouldn't be thinking about for a while—for one thing, they weren't even married yet. For another, eventually they would be leaving Acre and going back to England and making that long hard journey by ship was hard enough just by themselves, let alone with a hypothetical child. And then, when they got _back_ to England they would still have business with the Sherriff and Prince John to deal with, and being on board a ship for months would seem easy compared with living in the forest with one, and it would be irresponsibly dangerous.

No, children would be quite a ways off for them—something to be thought about at a later time when there was no war and no Sherriff and they had a roof over their heads that wasn't made of leaves and didn't leak and didn't belong to someone else.

Ifran and Nasir were nowhere to be found as he wandered about the marketplace.

Never mind, he could enjoy the city by itself.

People were just getting back to their business at the midday call to prayer. He never meant to come out during prayer and disturb anybody, so he ducked into an empty doorway so as not to be seen and let them finish.

Every day, five times a day, the clerics sang out chants and the _entire_ city stopped so that the people could kneel on mats and pray. It was required, he was told, to do this.

It seemed strange to mandate that all people pray at certain times every day. What if someone had nothing to pray _about?_ Though he supposed there were always things to be prayed about; they could prey when money was sparse or when food was sparse, for a good harvest, for the object of one's affection to return the feelings—_that_ prayer he was more than averagely familiar with—or for skin with fewer facial blemishes, or for their sons to return safely from war. But what if someone felt that they were asking God for too much? Or didn't want to be selfish?

And with all of those people praying at the same time, wouldn't it be overwhelming, even for God? Wouldn't it be better to pray when they wanted to, rather than all doing it at the same time? That seemed rather unfair.

Surely God wouldn't mind if people prayed on their own.

Perhaps he should ask Djaq. Djaq knew everything.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe he would just let the people pray as they liked. Maybe he could just whisper to God, he thought, and trust that all was well. And he, too, silently bowed his head.

Soon the city was alive again, people getting up to go right back the business and chatting and walking, just as if nothing had happened and there was no gap in time.

He stopped before the mosque at the centre of the busy city. He always did—he thought it was beautiful and there were always people here, since the mosques here were like the churches in England and functioned as meeting places for the people as well as a house of worship. It was massive, with a big domed central spire that looked almost like a big stone turnip and four turrets at each of the corners

He'd never been inside, though, and he wondered absently what it was like.

"So, we meet again."

He recognized the voice before he saw the woman leaning casually in the skinny gap between two buildings. It was Gabrielle, the woman from the horse market some months ago. He hadn't seen her in the marketplace since then so he'd assumed she'd left the city.

"Hello," he said. "I haven't seen you about."

"You remember me, then?" It wasn't a question so much as a statement; her eyes crinkled at the corners with mirth and in that moment, with strands of her red hair blowing across her freckled nose and cheeks, she looked like mischief personified.

"You're hard to forget—you're the first person who was nice to me."

"Was I? Well, I find that very sad."

"People here are mistrustful of Englishmen. Some people think that I'm here to kill them and ransack their city."

Gabrielle shook her head. "That is senseless."

He just shrugged. "I don't blame them, they're just frightened. And anyway—" he rolled up his sleeve to reveal one darkly tanned arm. "I'm browner now so most people don't much notice me."

"It is a good disguise, indeed," she agreed with a broad smile. She had dimples. "So, you are out on your own today? Or is your lady-friend somewhere lurking around a corner and keeping an eye on you?"

Will laughed. "No, no—I think we're safe."

"Oh, I am not at all concerned about _myself._ But _you_ might need looking-after; you look like you might be in danger of being snapped up off the street to be sold into a male harem somewhere in India."

His amusement evaporated immediately upon hearing her say those words. They _would_ have been funny, except that Djaq had said nearly the same thing none too long ago. Was it as popular a myth as that? Or did… did they know each other? He never heard either of them mention the other before, and certainly if they were acquainted _one_ of them would have.

Still, it seemed rather strange that they'd both said more or less exactly the same thing to him. It made him wonder, but he knew that Gabrielle probably wasn't going to tell him anything until she was good and ready.

In any case, he was happy to have the company; before he left England, he thought he was the sort of man who could be by himself without a constant flow of people and conversation in his life. After all, he wasn't Allan or Robin, someone who had to have people about and have something _going on_ all the time. Some days he might've thought he'd prefer it, after being in confined encampments in the forest with everybody practically living and eating and sleeping on top of one another and sometimes not having a moment by himself without somebody poking into his business.

Only now that he was in a place where he hardly _ever _had people around, he would have preferred to have the choice. He'd prefer to be by himself _or_ be with people when he liked, rather than having to put up with one or the other all the time.

Gabrielle was a welcome distraction and he enjoyed her company. She made him laugh and told amusing stories and listened to him. It was nice to speak to someone in English without having to play a game of 'guess the word' and having spectacular misunderstandings of half-messages in a language he could only barely understand.

The afternoon passed on walkabout through the city. He never really realized exactly _how much_ Bassam's house felt like a prison to him until he was out of it and in the city. It was a nice house and the people in it were nice—except for the head of the kitchens, Khalad, who didn't like Djaq _or_ him _or_ anyone else—and he was never in need of anything, but he didn't like being confined to that house all the time. And when he wasn't cooped up inside, he felt far better.

"…and _that_ is how you got here?" Gabrielle asked in wide-eyed amazement after he told her a condensed version of his story.

"Yes—why?"

"It is just strange, I suppose. But then again, the strangest stories are usually the most interesting."

She had no idea just _how_ 'interesting' this story was. He didn't give her the whole story, of course; he'd just told her that he and Safiyyah—he'd been careful to call her 'Safiyyah' and not Djaq—met in England, and that she aided him and his friends in taking care of the poor. He didn't feel at all comfortable telling her that they'd been _outlaws_ and were robbing wealthy travellers and breaking the law left, right, and sideways and very occasionally breaking people out of prison. He wasn't sure she'd understand.

"You said… that her name was Safiyyah?" She asked carefully.

Nod.

One side of her mouth curled up and up across her spotty cheek. It was very much like Djaq's 'I'm-thinking-something-significant-but-I-won't-tell-you-what-it-is' smile, he noted. If she was anything _else_ like Djaq then she wouldn't tell him what it was until she was ready, so he didn't press her or even mention it.

"What about you?" He asked.

"What _about_ me?"

"Well…" he began, searching for the right words. "You don't _look_ much like everyone else. You have a French name. And you speak English."

"I believe I _did_ tell you that I had a friend that I spoke English with."

"Yes, but that doesn't answer for your name or what you look like."

"You mean I do not have black hair and black eyes and I am lighter than most everyone else?"

"Mm-hmm."

She sighed, but fortunately didn't seem upset or angry that he'd asked. "My mother is French," she said. "My father is Saracen."

When he looked utterly mystified as to how in the _world_ a French woman ended up so far from home, she explained.

"When my mother was young, she and my grandmother were ladies-in-waiting of Queen Eleanor of France. When the Queen came on Crusade with her husband, my mother and my grandmother came, too. But my grandmother was old and she did not survive long after the journey."

"And then?"

"Well… my mother met a young scholar. He was kind and she was young and alone in a strange country and he helped her. Then she fell in love, and she decided that she had nothing to return to in France—her mother was the only family she had left—and stayed behind when the Queen went back. She was fifteen years old and he was seventeen and they have been married for more than forty years."

She smiled up at him.

"My story is not nearly so interesting as yours."

"Then where did you learn English if your mother is French?"

"I told you—my friend." She smiled again. "I must be going. I hope I see you again before I leave."

They were walking as they spoke, heading back around the city mosque and going in the general direction of Bassam's house, and she'd been walking behind him at the time. When he turned around to say goodbye to her, she had already turned around and was trotting back through the crowd in a flutter of gold and green silky drapes.

She was always so anxious and abrupt to leave. He frowned into the crowd.

He sighed and shook his head.

He took the long way back around to Bassam's house and arrived just as the sun was beginning to set. He made his way through the house and out into the courtyard where he found Djaq sitting on a stone step under the archway. She had her legs drawn up to her chest and her face buried in her arms crossed over her knees.

"The man is crazy," she said as he approached, her voice muffled in her arms.

"Your patient?" He leaned back against a stone column behind her.

"Yes."

"What's wrong with him?" Will asked. "He keeps coming to see you, every few days. He must be _really_ sick, I'd think that'd make anybody crazy."

She sighed. "No, that is not it. He is not sick at all. It is all here," she tapped her forehead. "He _thinks_ he is sick and dying but there is nothing wrong with him at all."

This was a new phenomenon to Will—people who consistently believed themselves ill when there was absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing good came from thinking that every little bodily ache or grumble was a fatal illness, particularly not in England. Even when people _were_ sick they tended to ignore it until it went away because doctoring was dangerous and costly and unreliable at best and hard to come by. But he'd seen it two or three times since coming here—people who insisted, beyond all evidence by physicians, that they were sick and possibly dying. It was somewhere between sad and amusing. Possibly both.

He was at least a little familiar with this patient, a middle-aged man, spindly and wiry and shifty, who came to see Djaq just about every few days.

"So… nothing's wrong?"

"Nothing at all. And nothing I will do will convince him otherwise," she sighed.

"So what does he think is wrong with him?"

"It is ridiculous," she grumbled.

"What is it?"

"He thinks he has a frog in his stomach."

Pause.

He bit his lower lip and tried not to laugh too hard, but it was one of the silliest things he'd ever heard. He snorted a few times into his hands.

"You see?" She said. "It is ridiculous! It is not true and there is no way in the world that it _could_ be true, but he will not believe anything I tell him! How do I _prove_ that there is no frog in his stomach?"

Instead of dissolving into a laughing fit, he began to think, frowning thoughtfully and absently picking at a loose thread in his shirt sleeve. A thought occurred to him.

"Well…"

"Well what?" She said a little too quickly.

"You'll think it's weird."

"The man thinks he has a _frog_ in his belly. Whatever you think of will help me."

"You sure?"

"Yes, yes—please, tell me!"

"If he won't believe that there's nothing wrong with him, couldn't you just make him think that you cured him?"

"How would I do that? If you have an idea, do please tell me."

He knew next to nothing about medicine and wasn't sure exactly how much of this was even possible, or if Djaq would think it was too bizarre to even try. But she was always willing to listen to him, and she'd previously told him that she thought he was one of the cleverest people she knew. So he took a deep breath and decided to tell her.

"Can you make him… sick?" He asked.

"Sick how? I won't poison him, no matter how badly I might want to."

"I mean, can you make him throw up?"

"Well, yes, but… why?"

"There _have_ to be some frogs around here that you could catch. Then just make him sick and then when he's busy throwing up his boots, just slip the frog into the bucket. He'll see it there and he'll think the frog is gone and he'll leave you be."

There was a silence as Djaq sat there pensively taking in his suggestion, her eyes narrowed and staring off into space like she did whenever she was trying to vividly envision something in her head. Then she stood up to be level with him and turned to him with her fists planted on her hips.

"Will! Exactly what kind of a physician do you think I am?" She demanded.

He instinctively recoiled a little bit, thinking he'd upset her or said something that was patently wrong and unethical.

"That is _deceitful!_ That is sneaky and _wrong_ and it is possibly the best idea I think I have ever heard." She stood closer to him and stood on her toes and kissed his shocked expression. "Thank you!"

Late that night saw them in the courtyard's garden, near the fountain, hunting frogs in the dark.

The funny thing about frogs was that they were much like crickets: always heard, rarely seen. For all the noise the things made, Will expected that the entire garden would be _teeming_ with those annoying peeping frogs, but they proved irritatingly elusive.

The night was damp and cool, but not as cold as it had been. It was early March now, or thereabouts—he'd done the math in his head; Acre threw his mental calendar off because he couldn't tell what time of year it was based on the weather—and the short, mild winter was beginning to warm into springtime. The ground was moist and spongy and the dirt in the gardens was getting a bit muddy.

The peeps and croaks of frogs were constant and surrounded them, but they _still_ couldn't find any of the actual frogs themselves. So they crouched by the water and waited.

"Why is it that you can only ever find them when you _don't_ want to?" She whispered.

"Maybe they got word out what you were going to do with them," he whispered back. "I doubt there are many volunteers."

She swatted his shoulder, but in the darkness he could see her smiling.

_Chuur-eep. Chuur-eep._

He saw a flash of something small and shiny out of the corner of his eye—_finally!_ He dove towards it and landed on his belly in the wet dirt. The frog was cold and slimy as it hopped around underneath his cupped hands.

"You seem enthusiastic about this," Djaq commented.

"Got one!"

"Well, put it in here, then," she said, holding out a deep clay jar.

He dropped the little grape-sized frog into the jar; Djaq looked at it.

"I think we need a bigger one than that."

"Are you an expert on stomach-frogs now?" He teased.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

It got easier and easier to find frogs as the time went by, and it became sort of a competition between them to find the biggest ones. Their clothes were dirty and their faces and hands were muddy, but they were laughing quietly and it was kind of childishly fun.

"Come on, now, be reasonable," she told him when he jokingly produced absolutely the largest frog she'd ever seen. "If we are going to convince him of anything, he _has_ to believe the frog _fit_ in his stomach! I am not an authority on stomach-frogs, but I _do_ believe I would notice something approximately the size of a _donkey!"_

They dove over and around each other catching frogs, laughingly deciding which looked plausible for 'stomach-frogs' and which were too small, and whether or not the man would believe that particular frog came out of his belly.

By the time they went back inside, they had a dozen or so decently-sized frogs in the jar. They left it in her apothecary and then trudged up the stairs, muddy and laughing and trying to be as quiet as possible, to bed.

The next day when the man came back yet again with the same complaint, Djaq put the plan into action. It worked—he was so justified and thrilled and so grateful for her help in getting rid of his 'stomach frogs', and she bit her tongue and let him scold her for not believing him to begin with. All the while, she and Will had to hide their laughter behind their hands until he left.

o…o

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I cannot, unfortunately, take any credit at all for the 'stomach-frogs'. It is—as is usually the case with hilarious stories this—a _true_ story. I read about it when it was cited in a book about hypochondria, and I checked it out myself and found that it was, indeed, true. A man in the 1960s was convinced he had stomach-frogs and this is exactly how his doctors 'cured' him. Go figure. Remember, kids: reading for school doesn't _have_ to be boring.

Thanks for reading—I hope you enjoyed the latest chapter. Reviews and feedback are always appreciated, but never demanded.


	6. Wonderings

Oh, goodness, another less-than-cheerful chapter. There really is very little in the way of fluff in this story—apart from a few short and isolated bursts. It's really quite a departure for me, since I write it a lot, and even during 'Home Fires' there was at least _some_ fluff during those monster-chapters. But that doesn't really work for this story as it progresses. Anyway, here's the next chapter and I hope enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Djaq and Will, and Bassam, and any of the other characters that are featured in this chapter that you recognize from the show are _not_ my creations. I'm just borrowing 'em and filling in some blanks in the story.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

_The scene was fresh before her—she was in Bassam's house, sitting in his study, all by herself. Where was everybody else? She didn't know. She didn't know _anything,_ even though she must have lived it before. It all looked so familiar. But she had no idea why she was here but she felt like something bad was going to happen. So she waited anxiously, sitting stiffly in the chair with her hands on he knees and her back straight, looking ahead blankly and waiting, waiting._

_The clothes were feminine—pink and yellow tunic that came down to her calves and long trousers that draped breezily, and a loose veil over her hair. She felt a warm weight at her back; her hair was still long and in twin plaits all the way down to her waist._

_She was sixteen years old again, and her brother had left to fight against the invading Crusaders. They were moving closer to Acre, intent on taking the port city for themselves and gaining control of the area. Her people were taking any male older than fifteen who could hold a weapon into their army, and her brother went. She hadn't wanted him to go. He could get hurt or worse out there, fighting against the _barbaric_ Europeans who cared nothing for peace or learning and thrived on war. She threw a fit when he revealed his decision to become a soldier—screamed and argued and thumped on his chest with her fists but he persisted and left to fight._

_Briefly, she'd thought of maybe going with him. It wouldn't be hard to disguise her chest—she didn't have much of one—and she could cut off her hair. She already had some knowledge about swordplay, and she was good with horses, and she could wrestle and fight just as well as any other boy. It _would_ have been possible._

_But not likely._

_She remembered that day, watching her brother leave. She went with him to the city limits, even though she was told not to; she stood there at the edge of the road and watched as he rode off into the distance, until he was nothing more than a speck on the horizon. That was seven months ago, but it seemed like so much longer without him in her life anymore._

_And now she was here, in Bassam's study, waiting._

_What for?_

_The study disappeared and everything went back around her, and the only thing she could hear was voices. She didn't recognize them—only their words._

"_We received word this morning."_

"_You are sure?"_

"_Yes."_

"_How do we tell her?"_

"_Must we?"_

"_Yes. We cannot keep this from her. Allah would not allow us to do such a thing. She is his sister; we _must_ tell her."_

_She saw her uncle standing before her. His face was streaked with tears and his eyes were wet and bloodshot._

"_I am sorry, Safiyyah. He was killed. Your brother is dead—I am sorry…"_

_The scene changed quickly. She was running. It was dark and late. She wore clothes she wasn't comfortable in or familiar with. Her head felt light without the long braids—she'd cut those off and left them, along with every remnant of Safiyyah, back in Acre. Safiyyah was dead, she decided. If anybody would live, it would be Djaq._

_So she ran. On and on and on, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the scraps of her old life…_

She jolted awake and sat upright all at once as the dream faded away. She had to make sure of where she was; she looked around the darkened room. It was still the same place, with everything just as it had been. She grabbed at a lock of her hair and found it longer than the scrub-brush close-cropped haircut she'd sported for many years after running away from home. Now it feathered around her collarbones after some years of growth and not repeatedly cutting it back.

Beside her was Will, on his side, sleeping peacefully with one hand on her hip. He hadn't been disturbed at all by her sudden movement. She sighed shallowly with relief, feeling herself calm, if only a little bit.

She was sweating all over, dripping down her face and neck and back; she was trembling, too. That dream had been real and intense, and she relived all of those feelings and memories that she'd lived through when her brother was killed. It made her feel queasy.

That was one of the worst times in her life, when she learned of her brother's death. It wasn't long after her closest friend, Zahra, left Acre with her family for the safer city of Ramla further east; her other friends had been killed or left Acre, too, and her brother was one of the only people she had left. When he died…

All she wanted to do then was destroy the whole world for doing this to him—and to her. Hate and rage and anger and pain all boiled over inside of her and she went quite mad. She hadn't been sure what she wanted to do when she ran away—to become a soldier and slaughter Crusaders like the dogs they were, or run away and start anew somewhere else so she would never have to think of her brother or anything at all about her old life. Her head had partially cleared some days later when she decided to offer her help in one of the field hospitals; she would do whatever she could so that none of her people would lose any more brothers.

It was also the first time that her faith in Allah had been so utterly shaken. Her father's death hadn't really bothered her. What she told Will about her father was true—he wasn't often around and neither she nor her brother were close to him, and so when he died she'd hardly felt sad or even noticed at all.

Her brother, though, she was close to; just as they were growing older and getting to know each other without the silly childish fights of youth. He was becoming her _friend_ as well as her brother, and then he was taken from her.

How could the god she was supposed to love and was _supposed_ to love her in return do something like this to her? What made the world so unfair? She had always been told that everything happened for a reason and that Allah had plans for them all, but she couldn't think of any reason for the tragedies in her life—what was to be gained by the loss and deaths of the people she loved? They were just tragedies, and pain.

She felt the painful knot of sadness in her throat and she couldn't swallow it. The room felt stiflingly hot and stuffy all of a sudden and she carefully, quietly slipped out of bed and padded out of the room.

It was April now—the mild, warm winter was ending and spring was on its way. Spring was the rainy season here, and already the air was growing heavy and damp with the humidity of oversaturated air. The heavy rains would soon be upon them. But it was cooler in the open aviary than it was up in her bedroom, and she could breathe easier.

She paced back and forth in her bare feet, her face in her hands, breathing shakily and trying to calm down. She didn't want to make too much noise and wake anybody else up, either, so she tried to keep herself under control. She hadn't cried since Marian's death, and she wasn't too keen on doing it again. She hated crying almost more than anything.

Except, maybe, for remembering.

Throughout her time in the desert, in field hospitals, sewing hundreds of soldiers together from _thousands_ of pieces they'd been cut into by _other_ soldiers, she'd done her best to forget the life she once had in Acre. And then, when she left the hospitals and later when she was kidnapped and taken into slavery, she tried to forget her time as a battlefield physician. After that, there was the forest, and England, and the gang, and, she thought, a whole new life. Never in her wildest dreams did she think that she'd be coming back to this world, and so, out of habit, she tried her best to forget about it.

Her life was compartmentalized—there was the young noblewoman, Safiyyah; there was Djaq the field physician; there was Djaq the slave; there was Djaq the Saracen of Robin Hood's gang. They were all different people, and she'd wanted for so long to keep it that way.

Only now that she was back here, all of her past lives were coming back to haunt her, and all he memories she'd worked so hard to shut away in her mind forever were coming out. They were coming through in dreams, so vivid and real that she felt like she was actually back in time and experiencing those things all over again.

And there was nothing she could do to stop them.

As she paced back and forth, the pigeons around her woke up and cooed gently at her, poking their heads out of their cages to see her. Those silly little round birds that had once been so important to her now only served to remind her of what she no longer was.

She breathed deeply and paced back and forth until she thought she was going to wear a hole in the floor, but it didn't do much to help.

She didn't know how long she was there for. An hour, or maybe more. Just pacing, pacing, and trying not to think too much.

Maybe it was time to start thinking of returning to England. This place was too full of the ghosts of the past, of reminders of a time and a place that no longer existed and the lives she'd once led. She couldn't go forward with her new life if her old one was still dragging down and holding onto her ankles. What point was paying Bassam back for his kindness if it made _her_ so unhappy? Maybe it was…

"If you keep doing that, you'll leave a hole there."

She stopped dead in her tracks, startled, and grasped at her waist futilely until she remembered that she wasn't wearing a weapon.

"It's only me."

Will stood a few paces behind her, in his loose trousers picked up off of the floor and with his hair tousled from sleep. He'd gained weight during the last few months, she noted absently. He wasn't painfully skinny anymore, and his ribs and collarbones were no longer clearly visible through his skin; his trousers didn't have to be laced quite so tightly around a too-skinny waist and jutting hipbones. But he was still slight and lithe, just as he'd always been. His arms, hands, face, and all the way down to his collarbones where his shirt or tunic usually lay were all browned from the sun, and everything else was still just as fair as ever.

"What are you doing here?" She asked sluggishly, carefully. She tried to talk without letting her voice crack or croak or reveal any of her frustration or sadness.

"I woke up and you weren't in bed—when you didn't come back, I thought you might be in here," he said simply.

"Oh." She couldn't think of anything else to say to that, so she didn't. Instead, she turned her back to him and crossed her arms. She didn't particularly want any company right now—she just wanted to be alone to calm herself down enough to go back upstairs and go to sleep.

"It's the dreams again, isn't it?"

It was phrased as a question but he didn't mean it that way; it was a statement, simple and concise. She didn't answer.

"You can't pretend it's not. I've heard you, almost every night for weeks now. Something's going on in your head and it's making you crazy."

"There is little point to trying to interpret my dreams, Will," she told him. "They are just that—dreams."

"Don't lie."

Grunt.

"You wake up in the middle of the night and you're scared of something. Sometimes you scream into a pillow. I've heard you crying because of your dreams. You only ever get dreams like that when something is bothering you. I know you, Djaq. You can't hide it from me forever."

She grunted again and kept her back turned to him, grasping the hem of her nightdress tightly in her hands until her knuckles ran white.

"I tried to let you work it out for yourself, but I hate seeing you like this. Please, tell me what's wrong. I don't want you to keep it from me—if something's bothering you, then _please_ tell me. Even if I can't help, you won't have to suffer all alone in silence. Please," he begged again.

"Everything is wrong," she whispered, barely audible. "I dreamed of him, you know. My brother."

"What happened?"

"I remembered when they told me he had been killed. And it all came up again—all of that anger and hate and pain. It was like I was right there, and it was happening all over again. I was sixteen again and one of the last people in the world that I cared for was gone."

He came up slowly behind her and he carefully placed a warm, heavy hand on her shoulder. Instead of shrugging it off right away like she wanted to, she reached up to her shoulder and grasped it.

"I know why he went," she continued. "It was the same reason I did what I did—because he wanted to do what he thought was best. He wanted to do his part to keep our city safe. They were close, then, you see. Acre is an important city with all of the ports, and the Crusaders were always coming in to try and take it. So he went to fight."

She picked up the bottom of her nightdress and used it to wipe her suddenly tearing eyes. The words were swirling around her head and all she wanted to do was let them out. Why now? Why here? Her entire life was sitting on her tongue, knocking on her teeth, and waiting to come out of her mouth.

"That was the last time I cried. Until Marian…" she snurffled. "I used to try to protect him. He was little and not as strong as the other boys, and I was the older twin so I tried to make sure nothing bad could happen to him. He never let it stop him, though—he always tried to prove that he was just as good as or _better than_ all of the other boys. He wanted to be just as strong as they were, and when he could not be strong, he would be quick or clever and come out on top. He would come back bruised and battered whenever he went to see his friends, but he would always go right back out again the next day and try again."

She took a slow, deep breath.

"He was the strongest person I knew."

The hand on her shoulder slowly moved down and around so his arm encircled her shoulders in a gentle hug.

"When he died, I felt like God—Allah—had turned his back on me."

His other arm tentatively wrapped around her, and when she didn't fight it he hugged her close to his chest. She turned in his grip and hugged him back, her cheek against his chest and her arms around his waist.

She hadn't thought about her brother in a long, long time. Mourning and crying and being sad for his loss took too much out of her, and for the most part the madness that her life had become left little time for thinking about him—or, indeed, much time for thinking of much of _anything—_but this had proved a blessing. Just as long as she didn't have too much time all by herself with her thoughts, she wouldn't have anything to worry about. Keeping busy kept her from going crazy.

But now that she was here, not running around all the time with her attention constantly occupied elsewhere with a fight for her very survival, she could think about him again. For the first time, she could properly mourn her brother.

And she did.

She turned into him and cried there until his chest was wet with tears. She told Will everything she remembered about her brother—it burbled up between sobs and hiccoughs while he stood there with his arms around her.

As she spoke, she felt lighter and lighter. She hadn't realized just how much it weighed on her until it wasn't there anymore. For the first in a long, long time, she remembered her brother and fully acknowledged his death.

And then let him go, to rest in peace.

o…o

They slept very late the next morning, but nobody came upstairs to wake them and they slept all the way through until the midday meal. Outside it was darkly cloudy so the sun hadn't woken them up, and the room was still dim and dark even though it was well into the day. She woke up before Will, still snuggling into his chest with his arms locked around her.

After spilling her guts to him last night in the aviary, she'd spent a long time sobbing into his chest until she didn't have any more tears left. He'd held her and stroked her back and her head and comforted her. When she was calm and no longer crying, they went as quiet as possible back up to their room. Unburdened by her memories, at least for the time being, she slept easily. Instead of having nightmares about the past, she had peaceful dreams of the forest.

It was strange. In Sherwood, when she was scared or overwhelmed or angry or sad, she would return in her dreams to Acre and the desert, her dream-self taking flight in the saddle of a swift little horse, the myriad colours of the desert swirling around her. The heat, and the smells, and the red-purple dunes on the horizon were all a distant and happy—albeit greatly diluted—memory. She'd managed to forget all of the bad things and remember nothing but the good. Now that she was _back_ in Acre, the peaceful place she'd begun to visit in sleep was Sherwood Forest, with its towering green trees all around.

Her memories of the forest, unlike her former memories of Acre, were not diluted from time and distance; she remembered the bad alongside the good and she didn't even care. The forest was peaceful and beautiful. She was almost always cold, even in the summer, and when it wasn't rainy it was cloudy, and even when it was sunny the light hardly ever filtered down to the forest floor; it was dangerous and at times they were painfully hungry because everything they had went to the poor. But it was still beautiful.

The most perfect place in the world. And more and more, she wanted to go back to it.

She repositioned herself on Will and nuzzled his neck. He smelled like warmth and sweat and sleep. She'd lived among men for a long, long time and they always had the same positively rank smell to them when they woke up, but she didn't mind Will's morning scent at all. It was comforting and… weirdly arousing.

She kissed his pulse point. He murmured something under his breath, still half-asleep, and rolled over onto his side, taking her with him and squashing her; she giggled.

"You stopped." His voice was low and rumbled softly against her ear.

"You _moved,"_ she told him, then nipped his collarbone.

He rolled again until he was hovering over her, supporting himself on his elbows with his mouth just a hair's breadth from hers.

"That better?" He purred.

She rose her head just enough to kiss him hotly, her arms looped around his neck.

Then there was a knock at the door, and Will immediately and instinctively heaved himself off of her with such force that he nearly fell right out of bed.

"Careful!" She hissed.

"Safiyyah!" The female voice came from the other side, telling her to wake up and get out of bed already. Ayla did _not_ address Will, though she would have known that he was also in there.

Djaq groaned in exasperation and threw her head back onto the pillow.

"D'you suppose she'll go away if we pretend we're not home?" Will whispered. She giggled.

"Come on, we might as well get out of bed and get started on the day. Otherwise we shall be awake all night."

She wiggled out from under him and went through her things for clothes.

"How's that a bad thing?" He asked, sitting up to watch her.

She pulled off her nightdress and threw it at him.

"Come on," she said again. "Before somebody comes in to _make us_ get up."

Khalad in the kitchens huffed and harrumphed about having to feed such a lazy, lecherous couple when they'd missed breakfast due to their _own_ sloth. But someone—either Ayla, the only person in the world who wouldn't put up with his sour temperament, or Bassam—had made him let the pair have some food.

They took what they wanted _quickly_ and ate outside, sitting on the ground near one of the fountains in the courtyard. Eating outdoors had been a part of life in Sherwood, but mostly they took their meals indoors here as a matter of propriety. Whether because they missed it, or it reminded them of England, or just because of some acquired compulsion to share their food with as many bugs and rodents as humanly possible, Djaq and Will had taken to sneaking outside to eat their meals when they could get away with it. It was more private and they could sit snuggling together without having to endure the narrowed-eyed looks of thinly veiled scorn from across the table from her uncle and whatever guests he had at dinner.

They ate off of their laps and brushed the crumbs onto the ground when they were done.

After that, Djaq was called into the kitchen to treat a nasty burn on the hand of one of the kitchen boys, who squirmed and yelped and fought her as she applied a cool salve to his hand and wrapped it in bandages. He put up such a fuss that he nearly kicked her in the mouth and she had to bribe him to let her do her work with a piece of honey candy.

When she went back out to the courtyard, Will was gone. Lady Daisy was gone from her stall, so wherever he went he must have gone quite a ways to need a horse to get there. She frowned. That wasn't like him; he normally only disappeared when she was working long hours and needed to occupy himself. Otherwise, he told her where he was going.

She grabbed Lucifer away from his afternoon snack of sweet meal and climbed onto his bare back, deciding to content herself with a short ride. Wherever he'd gone and whatever the reason, he'd tell her when she got back. She wasn't worried about him—perhaps a few months ago she would have done so, but he was comfortably at ease in his temporary homeland and he could speak at least _enough_ of the language to figure out how to get back to the house if he got lost.

A ride was the best thing for her right now since she didn't feel too much like staying around—her favourite hypochondriac patient would only stay at bay for so long after she cured his imaginary stomach frog problem. Though that 'cure' had been an absolute stroke of genius on Will's part; she'd never have thought of it herself and was having a _lot_ of trouble trying to convince her patient that he wasn't sick. And then Will just came up with an answer in two seconds like it was nothing. It was amazing.

The way his mind worked was so fascinatingly abstract. She'd thought his genius couldn't be outdone when he disguised their weapons as instruments to sneak them into Nottingham castle, but he continually surprised her with his bizarre and wonderful solutions to problems. He consistently downplayed himself—he was a poor carpenter, hardly educated, couldn't write or read. Nothing special, nothing unique. And, indeed, once upon a time she might have been inclined to agree that _no_ man could be so wildly clever meanwhile not even knowing how to spell his own name.

There were other kinds of intelligence, she'd decided since then. There had to be. She refused to think that the men she'd grown to love in the forest were _stupid_ simply because they never had any formal schooling and could neither write nor read. After all, what other explanation could there be for the use of deadly nightshade as medicine? Or hiding their camp in the middle of the forest simply by disguising the roof? Allan had even once come up with an ingenious plan to distribute gold back to the peasants without letting on what he was doing—he reversed his old sleight-of-hand scams so that the peasants would always _win_ the game rather than lose.

None of them, particularly not Will, were stupid. Uneducated, perhaps, but the things that marked an intelligent person here in Acre were different than the things that marked an intelligent person in the forest. What had saved their necks more often than not was quick thinking and resourcefulness, not _her_ ability to read and speak six languages.

She continued to think as she rode. Out to the city limits, near the eastern reaches of the city—where all there was to see was desert—rather than to the north to ride along the beach like she normally did. She didn't know _why_ she'd gone there. After all, the only thing out this way was…

The realization dawned on her several minutes into the ride and she sat up and frowned.

Why had she come here?

Just over the crest of this hill was where they'd buried Marian. She hadn't been out this way since they paid their last respects—not because she didn't love or miss Marian, but because she knew that Marian would not want her or anybody else to stop working or living because of her. Coming here now made Djaq nearly have to choke back tears.

Bad things happened to good people. She'd accepted this many years ago. It was part of life. It didn't happen because God or Allah willed it or because of some infraction committed half a lifetime ago. It was because life, as a general rule of thumb, was unfair. And because of this, terrible things happened to people who did not deserve it.

Once she'd been able to deal with it by deluding herself into believing in the _Rotunda Fortuna—_the Wheel of Fortune. No matter how bad things got, they would always get better again; and no matter how wonderful things _were,_ they would never stay that way. The wheel kept turning and life went on.

Except that life wasn't _going_ to go on for Marian, nor for Robin. Marian was gone, and because of this Robin might as well have been dead himself. He was like a dead man walking for those days afterward. She knew that people oftentimes went on to live their lives again after the one they loved died—but Robin she wasn't so sure about. He had always been so strong, and before then she thought _nothing_ could have stopped him. While he fought for what was right and just and true, Marian was the woman he loved most of all and the promise of a life with her was often what kept him going through the hardest times.

He didn't have that anymore. He never would again.

Part of her felt guilty for having a life and somebody to love while their friend lay just outside the city in her grave. She and Will were having the life and the love that Marian and Robin would never have the chance to have. Perhaps that was why she hesitated; they could have been married as soon as they liked, but instead they put it off, put it off. Out of guilt, perhaps, that it would be disrespectful to their friends.

Another part of her worried about something rather less serious: her dowry. Her father was well-off and had begun saving up silver when she was very young to offer to her future husband so they could start a life together. Bassam was a _very_ wealthy man and added even more to that in hopes that she would have a good husband who could support her and a good life after marriage. It was cold hard silver, too; not cattle, or bolts of cloth, or a little leaky thatch-roof cottage. Will was already intimidated enough at times by her uncle's vast, massive wealth. The thought of being put in charge of her _massive_ dowry would probably scare him silly.

Perhaps, rather than using the money to set up house after getting married, they could use it to help Robin and the gang once they returned to England. Certainly it would more than finance their trip back. Not taking it was simply not an option—her uncle was simply too honourable to even consider such a thing, even if they requested it—but maybe she could convince Bassam to hold onto the money until they could figure out what to do with it.

It wasn't a particularly pressing thing to worry about—but worry she did. The more concerning issue was the ghost of Marian and Robin's marriage hanging over her head and holding both of them back.

She scowled at herself. Guilt was a terrible thing, even worse when it wasn't even warranted to begin with.

She was tired of feeling guilty for wanting to marry the man she loved. Appeasing a ghost wasn't a good enough reason, she decided. And in any case, as hard-nosed as Marian had always proved to be, she would have found out about her and Will's budding romance and spent a week laughing herself sick about it. Even _Djaq_ could see the overt humour in the way it came about so suddenly, and in the way they seemed the two most unlikely candidates for lovebirds in the entire group.

Marian wouldn't have wanted anybody—not Djaq or Will, or Robin, or any of the rest of the gang—to stop living just because she wasn't anymore.

Camels were easier to ride and far better equipped to walk in the sand with their flat feet, which was why her people rode them in the desert. But Djaq couldn't stand the foul-tempered things. So instead she struggled up the sandy hill on Lucifer's back while he sank up to his coronets in the sand. Once at the top, she saw the small flat where Marian's grave was.

And there, kneeling next to it, was Will. He'd brought some flowers—goodness knew where he'd gotten them—and laid them on the grave for her.

She tumbled down the hill in a cloud of dusty sand.

"Why?" She asked quietly as she came up to stand beside him.

He shrugged, not even turning to look at her.

There were a few more moments of silence; she knelt down next to him.

"You talked about your brother last night, and… I don't know… it made me think of her," he nodded at the small mound of sand before them. "I miss her."

"So do I."

He sighed sadly and leaned back to plunk himself down in the sand. He passed a hand over his eyes, wiping away tears that weren't there.

"They waited too long," he continued. "They were so busy trying to do everything else for every_one_ else and… they never got the chance. They were too busy being Robin Hood that they couldn't—until it was too late." He paused to look at her, "That would've been us, wouldn't it? If not for the barn."

She wanted to tell him no, that it wouldn't have been the same and someday she'd've told him that she loved him, but that would have been a lie. He was right. The only reason she told him that night was because she thought she would never see him again.

"I thought as much," was all he said.

The silence once again descended on them, but it was peaceful and understanding. They had had certainly _far more_ than their fair share of luck to be here today. They cheated death _twice_ and here they were. The spectre of their pasts and of Marian's death and Robin's torment hung close to them, but it would be a stupid and thoughtless mistake not to take advantage of the extraordinary new chance they'd been given together.

He stood and offered her a hand; she took it and he pulled her to her feet. He kept hold of her hands after she was up and held them close to his chest. She could feel his steadily beating heart through the backs of their hands.

Then he smiled a rather roguish and cheeky smile and asked, "So why aren't we married yet?"

o…o

0…0…0…0…0

I have quite a few things worked out in my head about Djaq and Will that have never been mentioned in this story and that never proved pertinent to write about. One of them is that Djaq, being as well-educated as she is, knows six different languages. She can speak, read, and write Arabic and English, obviously, but she can also speak and read French and Hebrew. Due to her education, she can also read and write Latin and Ancient Greek, but since they're dead languages she doesn't speak either of them terribly well. (Good thing she doesn't have to!) Again, it's just stuff that's floating around in my head that never ended up being used in the story, but I wanted to mention it.

I also hope you enjoyed the little insight into Djaq's past—yet another small scene from the parts of her life we _never_ heard about. I like imagining how characters change and become the people we know and love; we are, after all, elastic and adaptable beings. We don't stay the same our entire lives and let's face it—we'd be pretty boring if we did.

See you next chapter! 


	7. Scarletts

Aack, it's been a funny week. I'm glad to get back to semi-normalcy. As has been brought up in the reviews—the 'M'-word has been mentioned in the story! Djaq and Will might finally tie the knot. I know a lot of people like to write them as getting married more or less immediately after the second series ended, but I don't know if they'd do that. But then, I'm not a writer from the show. All my interpretation.

Disclaimer: Djaq and Will and the rest of the recognizable characters are not my property. I don't intend to infringe on anybody's copyrights. Don't sue. I have no money.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

"You'll have to be more specific than that," he told her. He'd been trying to get this answer out of her all afternoon and she'd yet to give him a straightforward one. How hard an answer could it possibly be? But she kept giving him vague and half-hearted answers and wincing, like the subject was painfully awkward to broach.

It wasn't a surprise in the least to find out that Djaq had a dowry—or the rough Saracen equivalent of one—for the man who would someday marry her. She came from a wealthy family, so of course she would. Even in Nottingham, the poorest families had dowries for their daughters—a couple of pigs or a portion of her father's land, perhaps. Though he hardly expected _her_ dowry to consist of pigs and damp muddy land and a few dilapidated pieces of furniture, but she _was_ being more than averagely evasive about it. All she was telling him was that her dowry consisted of silver. She wasn't saying how much.

She fidgeted nervously where she sat, cross-legged on the bed a few inches from him. She fiddled with her shawl and chewed her lower lip thoughtfully before speaking again.

"It is… a _lot_ of silver," she offered lamely.

He paused for a beat, massaging his temples.

"Djaq, that doesn't help me," he said slowly, wishing she would just give him a proper answer. "It sort of goes without saying that you and I have _wildly_ different ideas about what 'a lot' of money is. Before I joined Robin, I'd never seen more than two gold coins in one place in my _life."_

She still had that worried expression on her face and her bottom lip between her teeth but she didn't say anything else. It was very unlike her—it was starting to worry him, though he couldn't imagine _what_ was making her so hesitant. Maybe she was afraid of scaring him. It was true that he found all of this wealth more than a little intimidating, but was she actually worried that it would… what, put him off? Make him not want to marry her? _That_ was silly. He couldn't imagine uncovering some previously unknown vice so terrible that it would make him fall right out of love. Certainly a simply dowry couldn't do it.

He sighed.

"What if I guess, then?"

"That would be a place to start," she said. "Go ahead."

"All right." He rubbed the space between his eyes and thought for a moment. "Is it more than a hundred pieces of silver?" He asked.

"Oh, yes," she replied quickly. "Much more."

"Is it more than _five_ hundred?"

Pause.

"Yes."

He felt himself falter. This was a _really big_ sum of money they were talking about. More than he could have expected to make in his entire _life_ as a carpenter. He allowed himself a moment to gather his thoughts before he went on.

"More than a thousand?" He asked, his own voice going high and a little squeaky and betraying him.

She didn't even give him a verbal answer; this time she just nodded guiltily.

"If I have to guess much higher, we'll be getting to numbers that I can't even _count_ to," he warned.

"It is… more than a thousand," she said. "Quite a bit more than a thousand."

"How much?"

Another pause. He was afraid she was going to refuse to tell him again, but this time she relented.

"Five thousand," she whispered.

And he nearly fell off the edge of the bed.

"Will!" She lurched forward to catch him by his shirt before he went too far. "Be careful!"

"That's…" he started and then trailed off.

"I told you it was a lot."

"That's a bit more than 'a lot'!"

"Bassam is a wealthy man. My father was, too."

_Five thousand_ pieces of silver? He could see why she was so reluctant to tell him now. That was… he had no idea how much money that was in pounds and shillings, but it was quite possibly more money than he and his brother and every peasant in Nottingham would have if they pooled all of their money together. He had _absolutely no idea_ how on earth he was supposed to handle it.

It did rather put him off—not off of Djaq, but off of her dowry. He would much rather take a handful of silver, enough to pay his obligations in England and start a life, and leave the rest here. He was a peasant, not a noble.

In truth, he hadn't wanted to take her dowry to begin with. He just wanted Djaq, by herself. That was all he wanted and needed.

Maybe they should just get married in secret and tell nobody. That way they wouldn't have to worry.

"Are you all right?" She asked. "I talked to Bassam. I asked him if he would keep it until we could figure out what to do with it."

_That_ came as a relief. "What'd he say?"

"He said that he would—though I think that _he_ thinks I am talking about getting a place to live and setting up house."

He winced involuntarily. For all that Djaq was usually a straightforward woman, she had trouble being quite so blunt with her uncle. They'd been here all these months and he _still_ didn't think she'd told him that the stay wouldn't be permanent. He didn't know if she was afraid of his reaction, or _what,_ but eventually she would _have_ to tell him; it was unfair for everybody involved if she kept it from him right up until they climbed on board the ship to leave.

"You _will_ have to tell him at some point," he said softly.

"I know—I know that." She still sounded guilty. "I just keep putting it off. It would break his heart."

"It'll break his heart if you wait until the last minute, too."

"I know."

"You _have_ to tell him—and don't say 'I know' again."

"Later, all right?" She offered. "Right now I think we should figure out how to get married without letting him make a big deal out of it."

Will winced; he didn't like the idea of having a big and fancy wedding here, mostly because he would be ridiculously out of place. Bassam probably wouldn't hear of such a thing as them getting married quietly and with as little fuss as possible—Djaq was like his daughter, and he was intent on treating her as such. Which included a big wedding. Djaq didn't want it, either, but the man had proved stubborn in this regard.

They approached him early in the evening as he finished talking with a pair of fellow nobles about some business or other that sounded gravely important and they didn't dare interrupt him.

The two men walked by them on their way out of Bassam's study, draped in their fancy long robes and quietly conversing; they paused briefly to look at Will and at Djaq and then back at Will again with narrowed-eyed expressions of thinly veiled contempt before leaving. He felt her reach back and squeeze his hand gently before going through to where her uncle sat.

"Bassam?" She asked gently.

"Safiyyah—come in, sit down," he said warmly, smiling at both of them as they entered the room. "What is it you wanted to talk about?"

She hesitated, nervous, before continuing. _"Khal—_Uncle—Will and I would like to get married."

Before she could even go on, Bassam's smiled hugely and jumped out of his chair, coming around his writing table toward them. "Oh, Allah be praised—finally! I am so pleased for both of you…"

And then he hugged them both, and for a moment he felt something for the man—Will had never felt particularly comfortable around him, even after all these months, because he wasn't sure how to act around him, but Bassam was kind and well-meaning and he just wanted his adopted niece to be happy.

He began to talk rapidly in a mix of English and Arabic about wedding plans and preparations to be made for a large celebration with people invited from as far away as the _moon_ for all Will could tell. He seemed so excited about the idea of planning a wedding for his beloved Safiyyah that he hardly noticed that _Djaq_ was trying to get a word in edgeways.

"Uncle," she said.

He continued talking, and talking _rapidly,_ barely even stopping to breathe. "I shall send Layla with you into the market so that you can choose the silks for your gown—and I shall speak to Ayla and Khalad about feeding the wedding guests. I _hope_ not to make you wait any more than you already have but even if we rush I do not think we could have a wedding arranged in any less than a fortnight—"

"Uncle."

"Your jewellery—for your wedding—your father left it in my possession when he died and I still kept it. Oh, I could not bear the thought of selling it or giving it away, and I had so sorely hoped that you would come back."

"Bassam!" She finally yelled above his chattering and _that,_ at least, got his attention and he sopped talking.

"Yes, Safiyyah?"

"I know you want to plan a big celebration but… Will and I would like to do things _our_ way."

His expression softened and his kind old eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at her. "Of course, my dear. You may do whatever you like."

"This means a _quiet_ wedding."

Bassam's kind smile faltered. "Quiet?" He repeated.

"Yes, quiet," she said. Her voice was stern.

Even though he was behind her and couldn't see her face, Will knew she was thinking quickly of something that could persuade her uncle to take her side of things. She was good that that: making many different people of varying opinions and personalities come to the conclusion she wanted them to. In a pinch she could make the members of the gang all think exactly the same thing by persuading each of them separately that a certain course of action was the best one.

Of course, she'd never had to expend much effort making _him_ do what she wanted. He'd do absolutely anything she asked of him. But it had always been a talent he admired and envied in her—her powers of persuasion.

"You have been so kind and accepting, and so has everybody else here," she said. "But I would not expect others to be quite so keen on _me_ marrying an Englishman. I would rather not give anybody the opportunity to be nasty about it. We cannot do that if we made a large celebration out of it."

_That_ would be hard to argue with, he thought. It was also true enough—while people were hardly ever outright hostile to him here, he knew their attitudes would likely change drastically if they found out he was marrying one of 'their' women. It was bad enough when a stranger on the street whispered about him and Djaq in hushed tones, scorning them for being together and cursing the barbaric Crusader for stealing a woman away from her people; he didn't need to conveniently gather them all in one place.

He only hoped Bassam would see it that way, too.

"Marrying him in secret would make it look as if you are ashamed of him," he countered after a pause.

She felt her grip tighten on his hand; he squeezed back gently, but kept quiet. There was little he could contribute to this argument.

"But we are forgetting the bridegroom," he said, smiling once again and looking up at Will. "I am sorry, young William. I hope you do not feel the need to keep quiet."

"I am… I agree with Dja—with Safiyyah," he said quietly. "I would _prefer_ doing something more private."

He maintained the cheerful smile, but his eyes betrayed his disappointment; Bassam was _not_ happy about it. Then he sighed and shook his head, and when he looked up again he still looked just as happy and cheerful, and he didn't say anything further to try to convince them otherwise.

"Very well. If this is what you want, my dear, then I am happy," he said.

o…o

Will had been characteristically curious about their upcoming wedding—what were Saracen weddings like? What would they have to do? And what would they have to say? His Arabic wasn't very good—would that be all right? Would they be allowed to get married even though they were different faiths?

That particular question made her eyebrows ride up her forehead. She'd never given inter-faith marriages a second thought. After all they all worshiped the same god, didn't they? Here it was just accepted that any _ahl al-Kitâb,_ the 'People of the Book', could marry one another. But the rules were different in England, she found out, and marriages between faiths were either frowned upon or outright forbidden. That was sad, she thought; two people who loved each other would have been forbidden from making a life together, wouldn't they? But then, a great many things were different in England than they were here.

She answered everything as best as she could, and could barely finish one answer before he asked something else. Being pelted with questions had always irritated her, but she never minded in the least when Will did it. His insatiable curiosity was one of the things she so liked about him; just because he couldn't read or write didn't mean he was content to let the world remain a mystery to him—anything he wanted to find out, he found out. He loved to learn, and that, in turn, made her love _him_ all the more.

When she mentioned that they would have to provide records for the mosque when they married, he frowned and looked worried.

"What is wrong?" She asked.

"Records for _what?"_

"My people are meticulous record-keepers. Every birth and death and marriage, businesses, exchange of wealth—it is all recorded."

"Really?" He asked. "Why?"

"They are good things to have. It keeps track of people and places and things should problems arise later. Why?"

"What sort of things do we need to get married?"

"You mean, what will be recorded?"

He'd nodded.

"Our names, obviously. Where we were born. When. Nothing we can't answer."

He went silent and looked down, then.

"Will?" She put a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't… I don't know when I was born," he said, still staring at his feet, so softly and quietly that she almost couldn't hear him. When she didn't respond right away, he continued in the same quiet tone. "Well, I _was_ very young at the time."

"They do not keep these recorded?"

He scratched his head. "The church in Scarborough might have when I was baptized, but… not of the day I was born."

"We can make one up," she said.

"I don't even know what _year _I was born."

She went silent then.

"My… my mother might've known, maybe. I think I was born somewhere near the beginning of spring—maybe April? But I don't know what day and I definitely don't know what year."

She absorbed that for a moment. He didn't know what _year_ he was born—he didn't even know how old he was. It didn't make her think any less of him, it was just sort of… shocking. Knowing one's own age was something that seemed so basic.

"We're not all as smart as you are, Djaq," he told her. "Knowing the day and the year I was born seemed pretty trivial next to knowing where our next meal was coming from or how we were going to scrape together our tax money. It just never seemed important."

Pause.

"I think I might be twenty or so. Maybe," he offered. He ran a hand through his hair, so unusually uncertain of himself. "The executioner called me nineteen when I was going to be hanged, just before I joined Robin."

She shuddered involuntarily. She hated hearing about this part of his life, knowing that things had gone so terribly, horribly wrong in his young life. It bothered her.

He still looked nervous and embarrassed and his face was starting to turn pinkish, so she lifted a hand and pressed her palm to his cheek.

"It does not bother me," she said. Then she stood on her toes and kissed him gently and smiled. "We will think of something to tell them. It is not as if they will look into it."

The ceremony was small and private and quiet in the mosque. Bassam came and gave her a silver wrist cuff decorated with little chips of sapphire—something of her mother's, he told her—and he kissed her cheeks and told her that he was happy for her. Djaq wasn't sure how much she believed him, because she knew him well and knew that he wasn't terribly happy that she'd insisted on getting married _privately._ She didn't think any less of him for it, though; he was just an old man, widowed and maybe a little lonely, and he just wanted to pick up and have the kind of family that he did years ago.

The imam remembered her from many years before and seemed more than pleased that the wild young Safiyyah was finally getting married—until he realized just _who_ she was marrying. It seemed that more people than just her uncle were hoping that she would marry well. And marry responsibly. And marry a _nobleman._ Not a peasant-carpenter, and an _English_ one, at that. But the imam was polite and smiled and performed the marriage ceremony and even humoured them when Will leaned in and kissed her a little too hotly for a ceremony in a mosque.

Will gave her a ring, too. Not in the mosque—after, when they went back to the house. He'd apologized profusely at first, as he was apt to do whenever he was unsure of himself, because the ring wasn't silver or gold; he knew that this wasn't the usual custom here, but in England this was what married people did. She didn't have to wear it if she didn't want to, he continued, but he just wanted to do it. After she'd calmed him down and gotten him to stop apologizing for everything, he presented her with the ring. It was a simple wooden ring, smoothed with oil until it was as sleek and shiny as any golden ring.

His ring was the same wood as hers, but on his hand the ring looked darker and on hers it looked lighter. He'd smiled when she slipped the ring on her finger and told him that that was where it was going to stay.

Then she closed the door and locked it.

They'd slept together and they'd made love many times before, but she hadn't known if this time would be any different. They were married, now, after all—they were allowed to and _supposed_ to do it, and nobody was going to scorn them.

It _was_ a little different. But Will's movements were deliberate and _tantalizingly_ slow; there was no rush to get clothes off before they were found, no pressure to be quiet. He eased her tunic up over her hips and her stomach and trailed long, slow, warm kisses the whole way up. She squirmed beneath him, tried to get him to go quicker and gain control of the situation herself, but he refused to let her.

He was _torturously_ slow, no matter what she did to urge him on. She nipped at his neck and his chest, which would normally make him absolutely crazy—nothing. He remained languid and deliberate and every movement made her breath catch in her throat. The deliciously hot and excited feeling in her stomach boiled over in her stomach. To say that the night had been _perfect_ would have sounded rather distinctly _stupid,_ but everything felt so wonderful and… perfect.

Djaq sighed as she woke up; it was probably early, the light filtering in from outside just barely turning orange-yellow with the sunrise. She heard no sounds from the rest of the house or from outside. They must have only been asleep for a few hours by now—it had, after all, been quite a long night. She giggled to herself at the thought.

She was on her stomach in the soft bedding with heavy, warm weight on her back. Will was partially on top of her, one arm draped over her, fast asleep. His breath stirred her hair and every so often he let out a soft snore but other than that he was silent.

She felt relaxed and still sleepy. He was nice and warm and his weight kept her pinned there on the bed. She shifted and turned her head, kissed his neck. He was just the littlest bit damp still with sweat. She would be perfectly happy to doze here with him all day. And she _could,_ too. Nobody would be coming in to wake them up. This was _their_ time.

She lipped his neck.

"'S too early to wake up," he rumbled. "Go back to sleep."

She nipped him—he squeaked; actually _squeaked_—then burrowed her face into his neck.

"It is not like you to want to _sleep,"_ she purred, hoping to bait him.

"We were up most of the night."

"Is that a bad thing?" She asked as innocently as she possibly could.

He didn't say anything, but she could feel the reverberations of the gentle chuckle rumble up through his chest and his throat.

"I did not think so." She nudged him.

His arm wrapped around her and held her tightly; he put all of his weight on her and kept her still from squirming.

"Don't be impatient," he chided.

She wriggled under him, but he could keep her quite still when he wanted.

"Not—fair—"

"Oh, hush," he said in that gentle chiding voice again. "And go back to sleep. We're married now—we have all the time in the world."

For the first in a long time, 'marriage' did not immediately bring to mind her friends and their all-too-short marriage that ended in tragedy. Instead all it brought was a feeling of happiness, hope for the future, and quiet contentment, and an excited jolt into her stomach.

She was _happy—_they _both_ were. For the first in a long time, truly and genuinely happy.

And that was enough, she thought as she snuggled into him and closed her eyes. There was time for _other things_ later. Sleep sounded good. After all, she _was_ still a little tired.

o…o

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Even in a marriage-themed chapter I can't manage much fluff. Oh well, I guess that makes what _is_ there all the sweeter, then! As an aside, it wouldn't be terribly uncommon for someone in the Middle Ages to not know when they were born. Most people were illiterate and, as Will said, there were far more pressing matters in their lives (like, say, surviving) than knowing when they were born. They might know the season or the month, but definitely not the exact day and most people didn't know the year of their birth. Especially peasants. Things like this often weren't even recorded in church records unless you were someone important. When you think about it, Europe was a really illiterate country at this time, wasn't it?

I might be increasing my posting count after this week. I finished writing the rest of this story (all sixteen chapters!) and I feel like it's unfair to all of you to make you wait a week for every chapter when the entire story is written.


	8. Ghosts of Safiyyah

Surprised? Me too. I mentioned last week that I was finished writing the story—from here on out it's just a matter of proofreading and then posting them—and it seems unfair to keep to one chapter a week and make everybody wait and wait to see what happens. So, two chapters a week it is!

For the curious, this chapter takes places in springtime, probably around mid-April or so. I know I haven't mentioned dates or months or anything in the story, for which I'm sorry. In lots of the Will-centric chapters, Will wouldn't know what month it was because different month names are used in the Islamic calendar, and he lacks a familiar climate from which he can determine the time of the year.

Disclaimer: Don't own, not profiting, etc…

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No parties. She'd begged her uncle not to make a big party out of her recent marriage, no matter how much he wanted to. Djaq wasn't ashamed of her new husband or of her decision to marry a poor carpenter—she did what she wanted to do and she loved him, and she was secure in it, and that was that. It was her choice to make. She just never felt any particular compulsion to make as big of a deal out of it was Bassam wanted her to.

But he did it anyway.

Part of her understood why he did it; while he might've known that _she_ was confident in her choice of a husband, he also knew that _other_ people might not believe it. He wanted to prove in a very public fashion that he was welcoming Will into his family.

But she was still put off that he'd gone and arranged such a celebration without asking or even consulting her about it.

Djaq felt more than averagely uncomfortable. Her new clothes were pristine and white with purple embroidery—her favourite colour—but she couldn't enjoy them because she didn't feel right in them. She felt foreign, like the time she'd worn that gold dress in the Castle; awkward and uncomfortable.

She had been kidnapped and spent quite a while being fawned over by attending ladies who remarked in dreamy tones about how beautiful she must have looked dressed in her bridal costume—which she hadn't even worn, she'd gotten married in her normal clothes without paying any particular or special attention to her clothing or appearance—and the kind of house they would set up in the city, which all led to talk of their _own_ weddings if they were married and the wedding they dreamed of having if they weren't.

The attention made her nervous and felt stifling; it was times like this that made her think of how little she could identify with other women. She wasn't without her femininities—she knew what she had and she'd used them before, thinking of and using her wiles just like any other tool, to help the gang distract guards or carriage attendants so they could steal from them, and she definitely had the feminine powers to wrap Will around her little finger. Femininity and wiles were one thing, but she'd never really felt like she _belonged_ with other women. She'd always preferred the company of men, even before her time in the forest and masquerading as a boy and was _exclusively_ surrounded by men.

And she was called 'Safiyyah' so many times that the name grated on her ears more than it normally did. Safiyyah was expected to stand prettily and let other people chatter to her, and let every man at the party trod on her toes and call it dancing; Safiyyah was supposed to grind her teeth and at least _pretend_ to enjoy the celebratory gathering of people she didn't know and couldn't talk to. She wanted to be Djaq again, and get out of the fancy nice clothes she was wearing and climb into bed with Will.

At times it almost felt as if Safiyyah was another person all together, different from Djaq. It seemed like she was impersonating somebody else, or that this whole life here was just a case of mistaken identity; she looked and sounded enough like this Safiyyah person that everybody assumed that this was who she was, and she didn't want to disappoint them. But this 'Safiyyah' person was a stranger and they had nothing in common, so the whole time she had to playact for their benefit.

Safiyyah seemed further and further away the more Djaq tried to remember how to _be_ her. She felt foreign in her own childhood home—she had nothing here, no ties and nothing to keep her grounded. Most of the time she kept herself 'grounded' to _Will,_ because he represented England and Djaq and all the things she felt attached to in a way she simply couldn't feel for this place. But she _had to keep trying._ She _had to_ keep acting, pretend she wasn't just as foreign here as her English peasant husband. All she wanted was _something_ tangible to prove to herself that she had some connection to Acre still.

She escaped the crowd inside the house and down in the courtyard in favour of getting some breathable air up on the roof. It was dark and a little chilly, but at least it was quiet and she could think and there wasn't anybody up here to bother her. The sky above was totally clear and full of blue-white stars, and the moon was just a tiny little sliver overhead.

There were too many people down there, most of them total strangers to her, and she was tired of putting on a too-fake smile and going further on with this Safiyyah charade and accepting half-hearted thanks from people she'd never met before and who only came to her uncle's party because he was an important man and also for some food. She was tired of them and wanted some time to herself.

Even when Safiyyah—when _she_—lived here and these gatherings were common, she never liked them. They always featured far too many stuffy grownups in one place talking about too many stuffy, grown-up things and it all bored her to tears. Before any big party or event or festival, she was usually taken aside and lectured thoroughly and sufficiently threatened with death if she made a scene and ordered to be on her best behaviour at all times. Do not speak unless spoken to, keep her answers brief, leave the adults alone. She supposed that if she'd _stayed_ here, then she might have slowly been acclimated to the lives of adults here and eventually figured out what, exactly, she was supposed to do in these situations, but she hadn't had that opportunity.

So here she was, at yet another of those fancy adult parties; she still felt like just as much of a child now as she did ten years ago, and just as out of place at a party that she had no business attending. Never mind that it was technically _for her._ All she wanted was for it to be over and she could go back to being quietly married without making such a fuss.

Poor Will was still down in that crowd somewhere. They'd gotten separated not long after it began and she had pictures in her head of him floating aimlessly in a sea of people—perhaps clinging to a bit of driftwood. After her head stopped spinning, she'd dive into the fray again and look for him. Then they could _both_ seek refuge on the roof. The other people probably wouldn't even notice they were missing.

This all suited her just fine—she was tired of the crowding and _particularly_ tired of hearing those off-hand remarks about Will. She didn't know how anybody could arrive at this particular conclusion, but some men seemed to believe that a woman's ears did not work unless they were instructed to do so by some man. So often they said whatever they liked in their presence without thinking about it on the assumption that no woman would hear or understand it. It made eavesdropping incredibly easy, but mostly it just made her crazy. Particularly when people were saying rude things about people they had no business talking about.

The words they used flew in and out of her head, making her reflexively tighten her grip on the roof ledge.

_Filthy Englishman… barbarian Crusader._ She heard their hushed tones as they insulted him for being illiterate—they didn't _know_ it for a fact but rather they just assumed that because he was English it also meant that he couldn't read or write.They called him those things amongst themselves, berating her for disgracing herself and lowering herself to marry so far beneath her station. Some of them even talked as if she had died.

"_It is a waste,"_ one of the elderly women earlier was saying to her husband. _"She could have had such promise, dear Safiyyah. Wealthy and beautiful and intelligent, she could have done anything she liked and had a husband who would be with her for it."_

She expected such things to be said at a _funeral,_ not a _wedding!_ And then the woman's husband had answered her.

"_Oh, certainly. A tragic waste of potential. She will just have her poor illiterate husband to take care of now—he will do nothing but burden her…"_

Which was when she decided to look for an escape of some kind.

She hated their attitude about Will and about her. It frustrated her almost to tears. Never _mind_ the blatant falsehoods about Will being a _burden_ on her or that this marriage somehow meant that she'd lost every virtue of any kind she'd ever had, but… this was all _personal._ This was _their _business, nobody else's—and yet other people felt the need to chatter about it. She never understood the appeal of idle gossip. Did they have nothing better to do with their time than hiss and spit all over _other people's_ choices?

She hardly cared what they said about _her;_ she was used to people saying less-than-kind things about her for any number of reasons, and she'd long since learned to ignore such things and mostly just let it all wash over her.

Will, on the other hand, wasn't. He was sweet and kind and inherently trusting, and he took any criticisms to heart because he wanted to make _everybody_ happy—and more than that, he already had some doubts about himself. He'd told her, more than once, that he felt… _unworthy_ of her. He was a peasant carpenter, he told her, and she was a physician and a noblewoman and from a wealthy family. What could he possibly offer her? The words of _her own people_ consistently made him second-guess himself no matter how much she told him that she loved him.

It wasn't often that he had these second thoughts—just when people talked about him when they thought he couldn't understand them.

Like there were people doing downstairs.

It made her want to right back down into the house and rescue him.

A noise behind her drew her attention to the edge of the roof where Will was climbing through the trap door from the top floor. He, too, was wearing new clothes for the occasion and looked just as uncomfortable as she felt. His things were also white, but decorated with delicate green trim and red threads.

She always thought green was his best colour—but not the tunic and loose trousers of the Saracens. The ill-fitting tunic and shirt and breeches and big sturdy boots he wore in England suited him better and she much preferred it. He didn't look quite right dressed in these clothes and all these months later she still hadn't gotten used to it. And she suspected that he felt the same way, and that he wore the clothing anyway because it made him fit in here; but he only ever looked like he felt comfortable was if he wasn't wearing anything at all.

He closed the trap door and then stood and turned to her.

"I see you escaped without bothering to rescue me," he said with mock-hurt.

"You are a big boy," she told him, looking over her shoulder. "I trust you can take care of yourself."

"How do you know that?" He asked, walking across the roof and coming to lean back on the ledge next to where she stood. "For all you know, I could've been swallowed up in there and disappear, never to be seen or heard from again!"

She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Or not…"

She smiled and looked back out over the city.

"It wasn't so bad, actually," he admitted. "I found someone to talk to."

"Oh?" She asked, intrigued. "Who?"

He paused for a few moments before answering. "Gabrielle."

Djaq heard that name again and frowned. She didn't keep track of Will for every hour of every day, so there were things that he did and people he talked to that she didn't know of. One of them was a woman he her that he saw every so often in the marketplace; she spoke English and was friendly to him, which had initially surprised him. Now they met in the market sometimes, usually when he was out alone.

She was curious about this Gabrielle woman—she'd never met her and for a little while she wondered if maybe Will had made it up just so she wouldn't think he was so lonely. After all, 'Gabrielle' was a common enough name that he could have used it for a fictional person, and he didn't give a surname, and she never seemed to turn up when she and Will were in the marketplace together. But she didn't dismiss it immediately and off-hand, either. It was all too coincidental and it made her wonder.

She didn't know where Zahra was or what had happened to her. Or anybody else. Most of her friends from her youth were gone—they and their families had moved on and left Acre to get away from the wars and she didn't know where or how to find them again. Those who hadn't moved on were dead.

She was still curious, though.

"But… she said something today and I don't know if it's true," he added cautiously.

"What was it?"

"She said that she—she knew you. Before, when you were Safiyyah. But that she didn't know if you'd remember her or not."

She frowned, feeling a chill run up her spine. Was it…?

"Did she say anything else?" She asked.

"She said to pass on a message but it doesn't make any sense to me."

"What was it?"

He frowned thoughtfully, as if debating whether or not to even tell her.

"She said to just say… 'Philomena'."

Her eyes went wide upon hearing that name. A flood of memories came on with that name, flashes of the past and the time she'd spent here so many years ago.

"Oh… my," she whispered. "I have not heard that name in _years."_

"What is it? What does it mean? She wouldn't come with me to help me find you, she just told me to tell you that, and I'd know if you remembered."

Her mouth twitched at the corner. "In Latin, 'Philomena' means 'nightingale'. It was… a pet-name, I suppose you would call it, that I had as a girl. There was a group of us and we all had nicknames like that." She looked back away from him and out towards the city again. "The friend I talk of sometimes, Zahra—that is a nickname, too."

There was a long pause before he asked the obvious question, "What was her _real_ name?" though she suspected he already knew the answer.

"Gabrielle."

Neither of them was paying too terribly much attention to their surroundings and so didn't notice that the door to the house had opened again and another person was joining them on the roof. They remained unaware of this until a voice behind them startled them out of their silence.

"Do you forget your name so soon, Philomena? I must say, I am _hurt."_

Djaq turned around quickly.

"I knew I would find you up here," she continued. "This is where we would always come when we were tired of being quiet for the adults. Some things never change, I think."

Zahra—Gabrielle—stood a few paces away, smiling widely. She looked the same as she remembered her: dimples in her pink and freckled cheeks and a familiar bright spark in her blue-green eyes. She was still fair-skinned, though Djaq didn't think she was _quite_ as light as she used to since knowing so many English people, and her hair was still dark red-brown and still long. There were, of course, more womanly curves on her old friend than there had been when they were sixteen—her bosom was fuller and her hips rounder from getting far more reliable meals in the last several years than Djaq had.

Will stepped aside and let the two women embrace.

"I did not think… that I would ever see you again," Gabrielle murmured into her shoulder. "You just disappeared."

"I know—I know. I am sorry," she said back. "Why didn't you _tell me_ you were here? You talk to my husband for months but you did not think to come find me?"

She pushed her veil down; her hair came free in the gentle breeze and blew loose around her back and waist. Then she replied, "I did not know if it was you at first. When he talked, it _sounded_ like you but I was not sure. It seemed too much to hope for."

They hugged again. Djaq couldn't believe it. Gabrielle had been her closest friend growing up, and truly the only female friend she ever really loved. Then her family left Acre to keep their children away from the approaching war—the last she heard, they were in Ramla, miles and miles to the east. Losing her had been one of the hardest things in her life.

Then they parted and Gabrielle narrowed her eyes and looked over at Will standing behind her.

"What?" Djaq asked.

"He understands what we are saying—I think perhaps we should find a new secret language."

She laughed. "We can trust him, Zahra," she said, using that ancient name to address her friend. "Otherwise, you would not have talked to him."

She grinned; she'd always looked like pure mischief when she smiled, like she was coming up with something devious, though it was hardly surprising because she usually _was_ coming up with some horrible plan.

None of the three of them were missed, and nobody came looking for them, so they stayed up on the roof well into the night and amused themselves. It was far more interesting than if they'd stayed with the rest of the party.

"We really were horrible," Gabrielle said in hushed tones. "I think the only reason we were never arrested is because nobody could figure out what to charge us with."

Will's eyebrows climbed his forehead. "Arrested? Exactly how terrible _were _you as children?"

Djaq giggled softly. "I _will_ say this—there are people in Acre today who decided not to have children ten years ago because they were afraid they would turn out like us."

"I like to think we performed a public service," the other woman said.

"We dropped rotten eggs from the roof onto people we saw being rude in the marketplace."

"Right—we got rid of the rotten eggs and stopped people from cheating customers and stiffing vendors."

Will was snickering into his hand.

The stories came forth—memories from long ago that Djaq hadn't thought about in many years suddenly came forward easily, as if they'd happened just the other day. She was twelve again, young and carefree and cheerfully mischievous. She played jokes with her friends and got herself into trouble to keep herself busy and got herself right back out of it again simply by talking softly and making big sad eyes at her accusers, a technique that had never proven effective in England.

Her brother had been small and unassuming and quietly bookish—nobody believed him capable of any real mischief—and their friend Adil was simply too endearingly, sweetly stupid to be accused of any wrongdoing or punished for it if he was. Gabrielle was just as devious as any of them, but she was so heartbreakingly pretty, even as a young girl, and could play innocence so well that nobody suspected her of anything. Only young Safiyyah was ever the culprit, because she looked like a wily little thing—and from there she learned to think on her feet and talk her way out of trouble. Wit was what she had. It was her strength and her weapon. Adil was kinder, her brother smarter, and Gabrielle prettier; Allah gave _her_ a quick wit and a big mouth.

People were always more nervous about her when she was quiet and well-behaved, she recalled. At least if she was outright misbehaving, or if something went hilariously and terribly wrong, everybody knew what she was up to. But it always scared them more than when she did _nothing,_ because they always worried that she was going to come up with _something_ awful. Whether she was or not, she let them believe it. It was far more fun that way.

It was another _world,_ then, so different from the one she'd grown to know in the last years. It did little to ease the feeling that she and Safiyyah were strangers; even with Gabrielle, and a link to her past and something that could anchor her to Acre, she still felt foreign and strange and out of place here.

Remembering the past, though, had taken the edge off of it. She still felt out of place, but perhaps a little less so.

The antics of her childhood were fun to look back on, and they made Will laugh so hard that tears streamed down his face, but by the time Gabrielle left Djaq was ready to go inside and go to bed. She was done reliving the past lives of Safiyyah and Zahra.

o…o

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Now we know who this Gabrielle character is! _Not_ a rival for Will's affection, but an old friend of Djaq's from when she was a girl. The reality is that most of the people she knew from her childhood have probably either moved on from Acre or been killed, but I wanted to introduce an old friend from long ago—both so she wouldn't be so lonely, and to show everybody how different she was when she was Safiyyah. Also, the nickname 'Zahra' simply means 'flower' in Arabic.

The next update will be coming on Friday like always, and I hope you enjoy getting two chapters a week! Like always, feedback would be enormously appreciated—but not demanded.


	9. Zahra and Philomena

Thanks for keeping reading, everybody! Your feedback is great, and I'm always happy that people are reading and enjoying what I write. It's been kind of crappy over here for a while so I'm glad to be returning to Fanfiction Land. I'm cutting it pretty fine and I'm only the night _before_ proofreading this chapter (ack, procrastination!), so please bear with me.

Disclaimer: The only character in this story that I own is Gabrielle. The others are all property of the BBC, which stinks.

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Gabrielle. She called her Gabrielle now, not Zahra; Zahra was an old name from another time and it didn't feel quite right calling her that anymore, not when they were both adults. Although Gabrielle would still call her by her own old nickname, Philomena. It'd been a nickname she picked for herself from an old Latin poem, but it was a nickname connected with _Safiyyah._

She didn't know when she'd begun routinely thinking of herself in the past in the third person, but it _had_ been some time and she only noticed it when she did it once out loud and Will looked at her funny. She realized it after the wedding celebration, she imagined; Safiyyah and Djaq-the-woman were two different people, lived two different lives. They had different views and different ideals and the only thing they had in common is that they had lived in the same body.

Everybody here called her Safiyyah—Gabrielle called her Safiyyah most of the time. Bassam called her Safiyyah, as did the rest of the household staff. Everybody she knew—even Will called her by her old name when they were out in public where other people could overhear their conversations. It would, after all, be more than improper for him to be overheard in public referring to his own wife by what was unmistakably—and in _two languages_ no less—a man's name. The only time she felt like herself these days was when all traces of Safiyyah and Acre were away from her—when her expensive, high-quality clothing was cast aside and she was alone with Will and he called her Djaq.

That irritating feeling would come to her then—she knew what it meant but she never liked to admit that it was right.

For a while she was happy to have Gabrielle back in her life. Her old friend made her feel the littlest bit more at home in this once-familiar land. She was nice to have around, and amusing and enjoyable, and she distracted both herself and Will from the loneliness they felt in being here and so far from England. Having _friends_ was a good thing. But as the weeks wore on, and the more Djaq saw her, the more she began to realize how many differences there were between them now. They had a great deal in common when they were younger—they were as close as any sisters—but they were no longer young girls and things were different.

She'd been so convinced that if she just had _one _link to Acre and to her past, that things would fall into place and her two lives would combine. So much of her hope for her future here—however long that future was going to be—rode on that. But so far it wasn't happening, and she didn't know what else to do.

Had she _really_ ever thought that things could just pick up where they left off with Gabrielle? With _any_ part of her old life here? Maybe she'd _hoped_ it would be possible, so she could pay her uncle back for everything he'd done for her—after all, that was her entire reason for staying here. Bassam had taken her in when her father died, given her a place to live and made her feel loved when even her own father couldn't do that; he spend his own money to educate her and make sure she had the best chance in the world when he was under no obligation to do so. They weren't blood relatives, after all, he was her father's friend. A close friend of the family that she called her 'uncle', but he didn't _have to_ take her in and bring her up. But he did it anyway.

Which was why she stayed. Because he did all he could for her, and she ran away—she ran away and let him and everybody else think she was dead.

But she had the feeling she knew all along that it wasn't entirely possible to come back again to this life, and just refused to accept it. It was absurd to think that the woman she became could fit right back in with the world she left behind nearly a decade ago. And yet she still managed to find herself disappointed that she couldn't jump right back into her childhood friendship with her oldest childhood friend.

Prick, prick. Prick, prick.

That was _really_ when it made her think. Lately thoughts had been occurring to her, persistently and unwanted and prickling annoyingly in the back of her head, that maybe Acre was not the best place for her. She thought she would be, if not happy then at least _content,_ here with Will and the pigeons she'd once so loved. And now that Gabrielle was with her again she thought that she could even _enjoy_ the time here.

But that wasn't the case.

Not only had _she_ changed, but Gabrielle had changed, too, in some ways. In ways that she would _never_ have expected. It nearly knocked Djaq out of her chair when she found out about something so completely at odds with the Zahra she'd known as a girl.

"You are _what?"_ She had to ask her to repeat it to make sure she'd heard it right.

Gabrielle snickered.

"I am _married,"_ she said.

"To _whom?"_ She'd stuttered once she got over her momentary surprise.

Her snicker turned into a broad smile. "A salt-merchant. He moved back and forth between here and Ramla for the trade. We come here so he is closer to his trade partners, and the rest of the time we still live in Ramla. His name is Esmail."

She was still having a little trouble wrapping her brain around it. "When did _this_ happen?"

She sighed. "Oh, some years ago. My father's idea, you see—he was a good match, wealthy, and had trade connections. At least he was closer to my age at the time. I was eighteen, he was twenty-three."

For Gabrielle, this was undoubtedly some small measure of relief for an arranged marriage; she'd been concerned when they were younger that when the time came when she was old enough to get married that her father would arrange a marriage with a baby husband or somebody old enough to be her grandfather. Bassam would not likely have outright arranged a marriage for Safiyyah, had she stayed—or at least, if he _had_ she'd've had her say in the man she married. Gabrielle's family was different. She and her siblings were half-French, which sometimes didn't sit well with other Saracens. And though the siblings were from a well-off family, they needed the marriage and the connections that their marriageable children could bring. Gabrielle was the youngest, and the last to marry.

To hear Gabrielle was married surprised her. The Gabrielle that she knew—when she was Zahra—fought the idea of an arranged marriage tooth and nail. She was determined that, if she was to marry at all, she would love and _be_ loved. She'd been convinced she could frighten away anybody her parents wanted to marry her off to—and for a while it appeared to be working.

"And you just… married him anyway? You used to say you would scare away any man who wanted your hand. At least, that is how I remember things being."

She'd smiled crookedly. "I tried. It worked for lots of men, but not for him. The more horrid I acted, the more he liked me."

She frowned deeply and looked down. They were sitting in the narrow alley between two houses, where there was just enough room for them to sit facing each other, their backs against the walls behind them and their legs side-by-side. The things her friend was saying sounded so unlike the young woman she remembered.

"Are you at least… happy?" She asked tentatively.

"Philomena," she said gently. Djaq felt a cool, delicate hand on her cheek. "Look at me."

She tilted her head up.

"If I was not happy, I would have left. I _am_ happy, I promise."

"What happened?"

"At first I was determined to make sure that he was unhappy with me—if I was going to be an unwilling bride, then _he_ would be an unhappy groom. I swore I would not love him back."

_This_ sounded much more like the Gabrielle she knew. She was always stubborn—it was a trait they had in common in their youth and still did—and was never one to simply accept someone else's plans for her. There had to be more to this story, so Djaq said nothing and waited for her to continue.

"And then I got to know him, and I liked him. And then I loved him. If I had known him before we were married I might well have wanted to marry him, so it all worked out in the end—just not in the order I had wanted to do things."

Pause.

"I _am_ happy," she reassured her again. "I really am. I promise you."

Even though the words came from Gabrielle herself, Djaq wasn't completely sure what to think. The old Gabrielle would probably have heard a story like that and scoffed at it and declared that she would never allow such a thing to happen to _her._ She was so different now, contentedly married in an _arranged_ marriage.

Of course, she herself was different, too—that had become abundantly clear the longer she lived in Acre. Young Safiyyah was stubborn and wilful and full of all kinds of things that Djaq-the-woman didn't believe or even _remember_ much anymore. She was impetuous, acted without thinking. One could never go _too far_ in the name of good, or so she'd once thought. Safiyyah was all fire, and very little real passion.

She imagined the way she once was, the Safiyyah she'd once been, and imagined what she might say if one day somebody told her the details of the life she'd live in future—she would grow up and calm down, that she would _marry._

"_I will _never_ marry!"_ The voice of her young self rang clearly in her head. _"A Crusader? An _English_ man? No! Never! I shall never marry, and I _certainly_ shall never marry a barbarian!"_

Change was a human thing and a survival tactic. The more was seen, the more was known, and in accordance with that behaviours and thoughts and beliefs were modified. If she had never changed in response to the things she'd experienced in her life, she would have been dead long ago. People changed. It was just a part of life.

It had been on the busiest day of the market—the beginning of the week when the merchants got new supplies and the traders came back with luxurious wares from far away—all three of them were sitting on the roof and eating lunch. Poor Will had been sweating and uncomfortable in the late May sun. Summer was close now, but already he was suffering from the heat. Come August he would be miserable.

They were safely above the veritable _mob_ that had formed in the market and they were leaning down to watch the activity below. Long hours were spent in childhood sitting on the rooftops and watching the madness and the herds of people in the marketplace. For children who were supposed to be _seen_ and not _heard,_ standing so far over the bustle of the city was a way to live in the adult world without actually having to _stand_ in it.

It was a away to learn about how people behaved. She had always been fascinated by _people,_ and the things they did and _why_ they did what they did. When she was younger she watched and internalized everything she saw, so that she would know how to act and what to say around certain types of people to get the response she wanted.

She and her brother, Gabrielle, and Adil used to sit up here and watch the people as they went about their business. When they saw something that they decided, for whatever reason, they didn't like, they took it upon themselves and their juvenile and zealous sense of justice to right the perceived wrong. Mostly they just took anything soft, wet, or smelly that they could get their hands on and dropped it onto the offending parties. That had been her first early experience with the idea of fixing the problems and the injustices that went unnoticed and that other people never bothered to tend. It made sense that years later she would find a home with Robin Hood.

These days she'd long since stopped trying to carry on justice by dropping rotten eggs on people's heads from a great height—that was silly and childish and it didn't actually solve any problems. And every time they did it they had to run away and hide so they wouldn't be caught. There were other and more helpful ways that she could right injustices.

On this particular afternoon they were quiet, not sharing stories of themselves as the most horrible children ever to walk the earth. They leaned over the ledge and in between eating would watch people having conversations below and taking turns speaking 'for' the people with dialogue that was variously silly and rude and throwing themselves into fits of laughter. She always loved it when Will's silly side came out—after living in the forest for years and, along with their comrades, shouldering the responsibility for fixing the problems of an entire country, she was glad to see that he still had a sense of humour. His broad smiles, laughter, and general carefree attitude made her realize just how on guard he was in the forest.

She too had been on guard in the forest; their work was serious and the reality of the danger of their situation was never far from them. Every so often the mood in the camp was light and cheerful and silly, they joked and laughed at some prank that Allan had just played on one of them—and then there was the time that they went through one of the many chests they'd stolen from some nobleman, only to discover that one chest had a false bottom underneath the coins and contained… women's clothing. They'd laughed for days over the thought of that oily pompous ninny in these frilly dresses before deciding to give the clothes out among the young women in Locksley.

Even during those light-hearted moments, they were still on guard and aware and never completely let themselves go. And seeing Will as he must have been in a simpler time reminded her of that.

Along with this there was also the knowledge, of course, that back in England the rest of the gang—the people they'd both come to call their _family—_were still living guarded and grim and unsure of their own futures.

Prickle, prick—in the back of her head she heard a teensy little thought, so quiet she could have ignored it. _'I wish I was I the forest with them…'_

Would she _really _rather have had the uncertain and often dangerous existence she'd had while in England rather than this life, here? She would trade this comfortable life of leisure and wealth for… for what? A cold forest, rain, grey skies, taking care of every peasant and orphan and little blue-haired old lady in England? Sleeping outside, on the cold ground? In the dirt? Under big heavy furs and oily wool—surrounded by her adoptive English family, with Will at her back all warm and snuggly and comfy behind her…

Actually, that sounded a _lot_ nicer.

She forced herself back into the present. Gabrielle and Will were miming a conversation for a couple having a rather heated argument across on the other side of the road.

"Wait, hold on," Gabrielle said, stopping their conversation to crane her head around to the side, her eyes fixed on something below.

"What's wrong?" Will asked, following her gaze. "Drop something?"

Djaq, too, looked around to see what she was looking at but all she saw were more people on the streets below them.

"No—here, pass me an egg," Gabrielle ordered.

Djaq clenched her teeth. She knew what _that_ meant but before she could warn Will not to do what she said, he'd already done it.

And then she dropped the egg on a man below.

"That man grabbed that lady's backside," she declared, as if this explained her actions.

"That doesn't mean anything," Will said. "I do that to Dj—to Safiyyah all the time." Then he realized what he'd just revealed and turned a marvellously bright shade of pink under his sun-browned skin. It was true, though—he _did _often have his hands on her, sometimes on her backside, and he never meant anything by it but affection.

That was something she'd never considered before when she was a girl—that some men might have just been giving their wives or sweethearts an affectionate little pat. The thought of a man touching her _there_ in _pubic_ would have seemed downright alien to her teenaged self. It would never have occurred to her that maybe the woman was a willing participant in this kind of physical contact. The only time they knew for _certain_ that the woman wasn't was if she grew indignant and herself slapped him.

"Why did you have to do that?" She sighed, frustrated at her friend. "Now we have to run."

"Run?" Will echoed.

"Go, quick!" Gabrielle said, jumping away from the edge of the roof and pushing them both towards the edge where another roof was not quite six feet away. Below, they could hear the angry yells of a man who now quite literally had egg on his face.

Before any more questions or words could be exchanged, the three of them were charging over rooftops, getting running starts and leaping from one roof to the next and keeping well ahead of the man who pursued them for quite a while until he either gave up or lost track of them from the ground. They were halfway to the south side of the city before they stopped to breathe, winded. Gabrielle was laughing quietly between gulps of air, but she was the only one openly amused by this. Will was catching his breath.

She didn't find these tricks and games amusing anymore. They were fine when they'd been children, but not so much now that they were adults. She'd long since grown out of this kind of 'fun'—Gabrielle had, over the last few weeks since reuniting, tried to do some of the same pranks from their childhood, and she simply wasn't having it. Dropping an egg on the head of a man who had allegedly just grabbed a woman's backside just didn't have the same appeal anymore.

She thought on this as the day wore on. Even after they and Gabrielle parted company, it hung in her mind.

"What's wrong?" Will asked her as she stood by the large bedroom window. He brought a hand up to stroke her back gently. "You look troubled."

She just sighed and shrugged.

"Won't work on me. I'm not Allan, you know—I'm not as dumb as a box of rocks."

Silence.

"Djaq, come on. If you didn't at least _kind of_ want to tell me, you'd've hit me by now."

Silence again. She stared blankly out the window.

"It's Gabrielle, isn't it?" He asked; after a few second's pause, she nodded slowly, and he went on. "I thought so. You were happy for a while with her, but not so much anymore. Something happened, didn't it?"

"Yes," she said softly.

"She's not who you remember—or else, she's _exactly_ who you remember and _you_ aren't who _she_ remembers."

Nod. Will was a perceptive sort—he'd either guessed what was going on in her head or he was very close to doing so, so she decided the just let him talk. Eventually he'd figure things out for himself, and right now she wasn't sure how much she could speak without potentially crying.

He leaned against the wall next to the window, his arms crossed over his bare chest and looking at her calmly. "I noticed that… whenever she talks about the two of you as girls, and she tells me all about the things you did together, sometimes… sometimes you cringe. The same look you get whenever she or I or anybody else calls you Safiyyah."

She felt herself flinch again—entirely involuntary—at the sound of that name.

"Because it isn't you," he said quietly. "Safiyyah is the past."

There was a long, long pause then. He'd gotten it. That was it, exactly.

"I thought… that I could be happy with Zahra, with Gabrielle, back in my life," she said, her voice so very low and quiet. The quieter she said it, the less true it would be—just so long as she kept her voice low, low, she wouldn't have to face it. "But she is just like everybody else. She knew a different Safiyyah than my uncle or anybody in the house did, but she still remembers Safiyyah and she is not here anymore."

"You're Djaq the Saracen of Robin Hood's gang, now," he said. "Safiyyah hasn't been around since you took on your brother's name and left here. If you try so hard to be _both _people at the same time, you'll go crazy."

"I know."

"I'm not gonna tell you what to do—whatever you do, it's your decision. But…" he paused and stepped closer to her. He slid his fingers under her chin to make her look up at him. His eyes were pleading. "You're my wife and I love you, and I want you to be happy. I haven't seen you happy too much since we've been here."

She felt her lower lip quiver. There was far too much truth to his words for her liking. Sometimes she wished that Will wasn't quite so intuitive and perceptive, that he couldn't guess exactly what was going on in her head just by looking at her with those piercing light green eyes. But he _could_ always figure her out, and he _did_ know what was troubling her. And, whether she liked it or not, he was right.

Was her happiness really worth this? This wasn't her world anymore. The place she belonged—the place they _both_ belonged—was that cold, wet, grey, drizzly forest an entire world away in England.

Perhaps the time had come…

o…o

0…0…0…0…0

I leave you with a cliffhanger of sorts. Why? Because I'm terrible. Djaq referring to herself in the third person—as 'Safiyyah'—when she talks about her past started out as kind of an accidental thing, but I ended up picking it up and running with it, and it turned into a whole other theme of the story. She really is _not_ who she used to be.

Until Tuesday, then. I hope you liked what you read here, and sorry for posting so late. Feedback, should you choose to leave it, is always much-loved.


	10. Summer

The story seems to be crawling a long from this point. The chapters are quite slow, but that's just my opinion. I keep reading over them and thinking, "Geez, these are some _short_ chapters!" even though they average about 3000 words each. I guess I keep comparing everything to those enormous monster-chapters from 'Home Fires'—which, by the way, turns a year old on Saturday! So happy birthday to that story.

Disclaimer: Still don't own it, still not profiting, et cetera and so on.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

Summer.

He used to think that summer was a nice season—warm and a little damp, perhaps, but a nice change from the months of cold and frost in winter and fall. There was always _plenty_ to eat around this time of year, too—bountiful crops and fruits, fish. Being too cold always made everybody cranky, what with spending too much time cooped up in some tiny, dank cave somewhere in too-close quarters. Summer meant they could go on walkabout as much as they liked.

That's what summer meant to Will in England.

Summer in _Acre,_ he discovered, was a completely different entity all together.

It got hotter, hotter, hotter as the days went by. Halfway through May it was unbearably hot—he didn't know how he was going to survive it. And then it got even hotter. The sun blazed and beat down and cooked everything. Even the very _clouds_ didn't dare come close to that baking-hot sun. The city stopped completely at the height of the day, every day, as people came indoors to escape the hottest part of the day.

Even indoors there wasn't much relief. It was so hot it felt like the air had a weight and a presence against his skin—like a blanket that he simply couldn't get rid of. It made the days stretch long, long, long. There was no escape, no relief. The heat actually made him sick to his stomach. He had headaches, too, and his flesh _crawled._ All he wanted to do was unbutton his _skin_ and take it off in an effort to cool down.

It brought with it a new and entirely unwelcome malady—sunburn. Djaq warned him before that he could burn his skin just standing out in the sun, but before summer it hadn't been much of a problem. Now with the sun at its strongest, it seemed he acquired new red patches on his skin every time he went outside. They burned and blistered, itched and peeled and made him generally unbearable company because they put him in such a horrible mood.

He hated summer here.

It was early evening, just as the sun began to set ever so slightly and bringing just the tiniest measure of relief from the heat. The entire city was sluggish and slow, the people hunched over from the weight of the heat on their backs.

He was with the woodworker, Ifran again, but they were silent. Will saw Ifran fairly regularly—he was really the only good friend he had in Acre aside from Gabrielle.

Except…

Gabrielle made him think. She was nice and she was interesting, she was fun to be around when she wasn't going back to childish games of dropping things on strangers from rooftops. She was one of the first people to be nice to him, to _talk _to him without being scared of him. He liked her well enough—but the way she affected Djaq made him worry. She went in cycles; sometimes she was happy with her old friend, smiling and cheerful and acting much like a girl; other times, she looked drawn and worried, as if something else dominated and occupied her thoughts. He knew what it was, too.

Gabrielle remembered somebody entirely different than the woman in her life now. She, like everybody else, remembered _Safiyyah,_ and didn't know Djaq. Even though Djaq never told him directly, he knew that being unable to identify with her oldest friend, feeling like a total stranger with her, and the people who had once meant so much to her and feeling out of place in her own homeland were all worse than being completely alone here. She was a smart woman—smarter than anybody he'd ever known—but it seemed like she thought she could come back and re-introduce herself into a world many years and thousands of miles removed from the person she'd become over time. Six months into their life here, it seemed she was starting to accept that.

It broke his heart.

He knew that she wanted _so badly_ to be able to come back to this life and to repay her uncle for all the things he'd done for her, and to apologize to him for the pain she caused him by running away. She was doing her best, but in the end everything came back to that one name that carried so much with it. _Safiyyah._ Everybody, _everybody,_ expected _Safiyyah_ to come back and live here when she simply didn't exist anymore. And as the months wore on, he began to see that the _only_ place he ever saw her fully relaxed and at ease was when she was alone with him.

Even so, she tried to make the most of the time she had with Gabrielle. She was _not_ willing to give up so easily.

Which was why he was in the marketplace with Ifran—to give them a bit of time to themselves.

"The ears do not match," he told him as he handed Will a carving of a bizarre-looking beast he called a _'fil',_ an 'elephant'.

He took the piece and studied it carefully. This part of the world turned out to be full of some _ridiculous-_looking animals. This elephant-thing looked as if it had a tail at both ends and enormous ears and great big tusks Ifran said were little pieces that came from _real_ elephant tusks.

"I like it," he told him, speaking carefully and deliberately. "It looks like a real one." Of course he was lying. He'd never seen a real elephant before in his life, but his friend looked more than pleased to hear those words. They spoke mostly English together, as he spoke much better English than Will spoke Arabic, and Ifran said that he wanted to learn to speak it better so he would know what the English travellers were saying—though he still harboured a rather intense distrust and distaste for Crusaders.

"You teach well," he said with a kind smile as the corners of his eyes creased. "My son expects for _me_ to make for him things—toys."

Will laughed the littlest bit. He kept himself busy carving figurines—little things for children to play with—and then gave them to anybody who wanted them. Ifran's son Nasir had a veritable menagerie of wooden animals that he'd made for him; there were three or four children of Bassam's household staff who were also amassing a collection of toys. And as he proved himself by being nice to the _children,_ he discovered that adults sometimes followed suit. They realized, perhaps, that he wasn't such a terrible man after all, and slowly they began to accept him.

He was comfortable in Acre now. He didn't exactly feel _perfectly_ at home, but he was at least confident in his ability to get around and speak the language enough to communicate. He had people he knew and saw with some regularity, vendors he could talk to and that didn't hide from him. There was an ancient, white-haired old woman with a wrinkled face and cheeky black eyes who owned a fruit stall that he passed most days. She liked him a _lot,_ like a kindly old grandmotherly figure, offering him fresh fruit and sometimes pinching his cheeks—and from what he could tell, she had a granddaughter that she wanted him to meet, even though he told her many times already that he was already married.

While Acre didn't feel like _home, _exactly, it'd begun feeling less like a prison. Which was odd, really; the less Acre felt like a prison to_ him,_ the more it seemed to become one for Djaq.

Hardly anybody noticed his presence here anymore. They were used to seeing him and even nodded a polite 'hello' to him as they passed or stopped to look at Ifran's wares. Even as his wife was feeling as though she couldn't belong in this place, Will was beginning to feel just the littlest bit more like he _was_ getting used to it and that he was fitting in.

He just didn't realize how _well._

The conversation he was having with Ifran was disturbed when he stopped talking to look at a commotion that was beginning to stir. Neither of them could figure out what was going on until Will heard the distinct cluntering of armour and leather and big heavy boots.

Crusaders.

There was a lot of arguing, vendors covering their wares and mothers snatching their children up off the street and out of the path of the marching soldiers in their distinctive white tunics. Nobody wanted a confrontation right now so for the most part people cleared a path and let the city guards come out to handle the problem. Anybody who didn't _have_ to be seen ducked under stalls or into the nearest building or alley so as not to be noticed by the Crusaders coming through.

Months ago, Will might have been almost _relieved_ to see other Europeans like himself in the city. He might even have stopped to talk to some of them. But a lot of things had changed in the last few months, and he hadn't even realized what he was doing until after he'd done it.

As the Crusaders came walking by, dragging their shields and weapons and field packs with them on heavy arms in the unbearable heat, Will found himself following the locals, the other Saracens, and hiding from them.

It wasn't until much later that he realized he'd done it on instinct, because he didn't want to deal with them.

"I thought it was funny," he said later when he told the story to Djaq. She'd been with Gabrielle all afternoon before she had to go with her husband back to Ramla. He thought it might settle her worries to hear it. Maybe it would make her laugh. Lately she'd been coming back from seeing Gabrielle and she would be sad or frustrated or both. He wasn't sure if his story had helped.

"You just… ducked down and hid from them?" She asked. _"Really?"_

"I didn't them to bother me. It's odd, I hid just like everybody else was doing. It didn't even occur to me _not_ to. Used to be I wouldn't been _more_ than happy to talk to some Crusaders. Not so much now."

She'd smiled then, and pretended to be amused by it, but the story troubled her well into the next day.

Will hadn't intended for it to worry her. She knew why he'd told her about it—he wanted her to think he was doing better in Acre. And maybe he was, but that didn't worry her any less. She knew the change would be hard on Will, coming to live in a new place where he didn't speak the language or understand the customs—_that,_ she thought, she was prepared to help him with. It never occurred to her that perhaps the change would take, eventually, and that Will would almost _become_ Saracen.

He dressed like them now, spoke like them. He'd learned social customs and manners. He could speak the language and knew people in and around the city—including a little, kind-natured and possibly crazy old lady determined to marry her granddaughter to the beautiful Englishman. He was becoming a confident horseman on the very horses of her people. And she _thought_ that she'd feel relieved at these changes in him.

But she wasn't.

It just made her feel guilty.

He certainly didn't see it this way and she didn't know if he'd understand if she told him, but part of her felt rather as if she was robbing him of something by keeping him here when _she herself_ didn't know if staying was the right thing to do anymore. To find out that he, along with the frightened locals in the marketplace, dove down and _hid_ from approaching Crusaders caused that irritating and persistent prickling in the back of her neck to come back.

Prick, prick.

She thought on it all night and into the next day.

Summer was taking its toll on her. She'd forgotten how awful summers right here on the coast were, hot and humid and unbearable. It made her tired and sluggish and moody. She snapped at her patients and at the household staff and everybody else who bothered her when she was in a right foul mood. Patients came to see her in large numbers suffering from heat-related maladies, which did little to make her feel better.

Will suffered worse than she thought he might, the heat sapping him of strength and moisture. It gave him headaches and stomachaches and also made _him_ unbearably moody. His fair skin burned easily in this sun, too, and his neck and arms now sported spectacular bright red patches where he'd been exposed to too much sun for too long a time. His cheeks and nose, too, had turned red, as if he was constantly embarrassed and blushing. She never _dared_ tell him that she thought it looked rather sweet.

The day had run quite long already. She'd seen her most recent patient off and asked Ayla not to let anybody _else_ in to see her, and immediately ran for a bath.

Her uncle, being as wealthy as he was, could afford to have an indoor bathing room, rather than using public bathhouses. She found it empty and ordered the servant girl Layla out of it so that she could sit and soak in peace. The bath was built into the ground, a big square pit with lowering stair-steps. It was deeper in the middle than she was tall. She sat up to her chest in the mercifully cool water with her head tilted back and resting on her clothes, folded up behind her like a pillow. She was comfortable and she sighed happily.

Her eyes closed.

She could be alone with her thoughts here for a while, which gave her time to think about what was _really_ bothering her. It wasn't the summer or the heat or any of the things that came with it.

It was that story Will told her.

She sighed sadly and flicked her fingers idly in the water.

For months she denied that this decision she'd made might not have been the best one in the world to make. She _had_ to make it work, she _had_ to be strong and keep trying. Those feelings of emptiness and loneliness she'd been having she attributed to feeling homesick and being away from her little adoptive English family and the home she'd made there.

But as time went on she began to realize that it wasn't just going to pass. England meant far more to her now than Acre meant to her when she left it. The more she thought about it, the more she missed it—even the things that she'd once hated about England. The rain and the dampness, the cold, and sleeping outside; they were things that used to bother her, and now they were the things she looked back on the fondest. She remembered the feel of being so very, very small in the forest, everything so massive and sprawling all around them, towering and making her feel almost _crowded_ amongst all of the trees. It used to make her feel smothered—and now, when she looked back on it in memory and in dreams, those trees and all of that green everywhere felt like a comfortable, familiar embrace. In her mind, the forest and the people in it made her feel safe.

The memories of the friends they'd left tugged at her heartstrings too. Whenever she thought of it, she felt an incredible guilt like a lump in her stomach for leaving Robin in his worst moment. He was overwhelmed with sadness and probably half-mad with anger and hate and grief. He was the strongest and bravest man in the world—he'd given up the life of a noble to fight the injustice and evil he saw in the world. The last time she saw him, he looked like a shadow of a man. It broke her heart then—now it made the guilt even more intense.

Much had called them both 'selfish' when they announced that they were staying in Acre. At the time she'd defended her decision, saying she owed her uncle her life. Now she was looking back on it and the more the argument played over in her head, the more she started to side with Much.

Despite the fact that he was always the butt of every joke in the camp and the one person they picked on whenever they were bored and wanted a laugh, she'd grown fond of Much and cared for him, as one might love a deeply odd relative. He was sweet and he always meant well, even if he didn't always know how to show it best.

And John, who missed his wife and son—all he wanted in the world was to be reunited with them and live his life with them. He didn't join Robin's cause for any deep-seated philosophical desire to right wrongs and to what he thought was best. He did it because he had to, and he would rather go back to living a quiet life as a family man rather than being a hero.

And then… there was Allan.

She had an odd sort of friendship with Allan. She loved him, but it was a different sort of love than she had for John and Robin—and different still from the love she felt for Will. He confused her for a long time; there was a rift in her mind about him. For a while she might have considered loving either him _or_ Will. He was clever and funny and wickedly cheeky and he could make her laugh until she cried. They teased one another and he made cheeky comments at her and she _liked_ him. She _really_ liked him. It was somewhere in-between the platonic, familial love she felt for the rest of the gang and the romantic love for Will.

She even trusted him when he defected from the gang and went to live in the castle as Gisbourne's panting dog. He was a good man—she knew that. Defecting had never been his choice to begin with; Robin banished him. A lesser man would have continued to give out information in exchange for money, but Allan, despite denying it, had a conscience; it ate at him until he wanted to call a stop to it, but by then it had simply been too late. And now, with nobody else in the group trusting him anymore because of what he did, she was starting to feel like they'd abandoned _him,_ too. They should have been there for him. He and Will were as close as brothers and she had something rather oddly more than friendship with him and whenever she thought or talked about him, she felt guilty for leaving him.

Guilt. Prick, prick. Guilt.

That brought her full circle back to Will.

Acre just _wasn't_ his world. It wasn't even _hers_ anymore. His story about hiding from the Crusaders along with everybody else in the marketplace only made her want to escape Acre even more. It started the wheels turning in her head.

She felt stuck here, and stagnant, and she didn't know what to do. She had it in her head from the time they came to Bassam's house with the gang that she 'owed' it to him to stay here to pay him back for his kindness for taking her in and for running away when she was sixteen. Will's words when she told him of this decision started growing louder and louder in her head _'You don't owe anybody _anything!' He'd told her. At the time she thought she did. And after six months she still felt out of place, but she didn't want to give up prematurely. She hated giving up to begin with. She was torn, and felt so _stuck._

The door opened to the bathing room and she frowned deeply. Layla must have come back to see if she needed anything.

"_I said leave me alone!"_ She growled angrily in Arabic. _"I do not need any help. I want to be by myself!"_

"Oh," the voice was low and soft. "Sorry."

She turned quickly and looked up at Will where he stood with his back against the door.

"I thought you were Layla," she explained. "She did not want to leave me be."

"D'you want me to go?" He offered, though she knew he must have known the answer.

"Of course not. Just—latch the door," she said. "So nobody bothers us."

One corner of his mouth curled up in a smile as he did so, then came to sit at the edge of the bath next to her. He pulled the legs of his trousers up and put his feet in the water. His cheeks were pink and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He wasn't letting his hair grow back in shaggy and long like it was when she met him—instead, he kept it cropped short and close for the hot weather. She quietly lamented this; Will was always sweetly pretty with long hair. The heat always made him look tired and listless and his eyes were half-lidded.

He was silent for only a few moments.

"You've been quiet since yesterday," he observed. "What's bothering you?"

She looked down into the water. For several long seconds she said nothing, turning the words over in her head. Then she turned over and folded her arms on the floor and leaned on them.

"Ever since you told me what happened yesterday, when you hid from the Crusaders… I know it probably does not mean nearly so much as I think it means, but it still troubles me. I cannot explain it, but I feel… I feel almost like I have _taken_ something from you. The more time passes, the more you become Saracen. You are trying to fit in until we leave, but you are not Saracen, you are English. And it feels like being here has started taking that from you."

She looked up at him.

"Does that make sense?"

He frowned slowly, then reached down with one hand to splash some of the bath water on his face and hair.

"I'm still _me,"_ he told her. "Everything's just the same. I'm still just as English here as I am at h—in England."

He corrected himself before the word slipped out, but she still caught it. He was trying; they were both _trying,_ oh they were _trying_ so hard. But…

"Are you happy here?" She asked softly. "Tell me honestly. I will not be angry or sad no matter what you tell me. I just want you to be honest."

Silence. It spoke volumes.

Then he answered, "Happy? No, not here."

She nodded slowly; he continued.

"I _love_ you," he murmured, tucking a lock of wet hair behind her ear and cupping her cheek in his hand. "And I will never, _ever_ regret staying. As much as I miss England and the rest of the gang, I'd've missed you ten times as much. I'd've gone mad, I think."

"But you are not happy here."

"No. But you said we would return someday. I trust you—you'll do what you need to do, and then we'll go home whenever that is. I trust you."

She turned her head and kissed his palm.

"I do not think I am happy here, either," she confessed quietly. "I am happy with _you,_ but I am not happy _here._ This place—it is so far gone from everything that I have become that I feel just as strange here. I do not belong here any more than do you."

She took his hand from her cheek and clutched it in her hand, then arched up out of the water to kiss him softly.

"I think that perhaps… perhaps it is time we thought about going back to England."

"If you're sure," he murmured against her mouth. "I still trust whatever you decide. I'll still be with you."

He kissed her this time and she sighed contentedly. Then she wiggled away from him with a mischievous grin on her lips and slowly started moving into the centre of the bath where the water was deep. He was still sitting there, frowning.

"Come on," she said.

"How deep is it in the middle?"

"Quite deep, I think. Higher than my head."

"Djaq, I can't swim—you know that."

He'd been more than a little embarrassed to admit this to her some time ago. He'd hardly ever bathed and swimming wasn't something he or anybody else really did for fun, so there was little cause for him to learn. In the bath, he never went lower than the first two or three tiers for fear of drowning.

"That is all right, you have nothing to worry about," she reassured him. She treaded water slowly and waited for him.

He stayed put.

"It will cool you down."

Still nothing.

"Please?" She caught her lower lip between her teeth and implored him with big sad eyes while in her head she counted backwards from ten, knowing that she could get him to do just about anything she wanted if she just played the right cards. She only got down to five before he stood up and started peeling his clothes off.

"I can't _believe_ I'm gonna do this," he sighed from inside his tunic as he pulled it over his head and dropped it into a pile on the floor. "I can't swim."

"I will protect you," she said, grinning. "If you cannot swim, you can at least float."

"That's the problem, I've _tried_ that—I can't do it."

"That is silly," she told him. "Of course you can. People float. We are lighter than water, like wood, so we float on top of it."

"Then why do ships sink at sea?" He asked tartly, tentatively moving out into deeper water. It was up to his waist, then up to his chest, where he stopped.

She narrowed her eyes—damn him for being clever.

"Humans float," she said again. "Come out here where it is deeper, and I will show you."

Even as he waded out into the middle of the bath with her, he continued to protest. "I'm _telling_ you, I can't float. I just sink right to the bottom like a rock."

She swam up to him and stood just one tier over him.

"Just hold your breath and lie on your back on the water," she said. "You will float, you'll see."

"I can't float," he grumbled. But he still did as she asked and held his breath and tried to lay flat on the surface of the water just like she instructed him to do.

And he sank right to the bottom like a rock. Just like he said.

"I _told you!"_ He sputtered, leaping up from the bottom of the bath and coughing up water. "I sink! I don't float!" He waded out of the deeper water to stand waist-deep on one of the shallower steps.

"That is _bizarre,"_ she murmured. "I have _never_ seen anything like that before. People do not _sink,_ they _float."_

"Not all of 'em, apparently!"

"Do that again."

"No!"

"I want to see how it happens."

"_No!_ You're not using _me_ in one of your experiments!"

"But… why does it happen?"

"I don't know! Can't you just accept that it _does_ without having to figure out why?"

"Of course not. I have been taught far too much of science to simply accept that things happen without finding out _why."_

He was scowling at her.

"Please?" She asked again.

"I said no."

Instead of asking again, she followed him up to the shallow water and sat down on the step. "I have just never seen that before."

"I hope you don't see it again."

She splashed him playfully; he splashed her right back. She giggled and splashed him again. He brought his arm back as if to return it, and when she covered her face with her hands he swooped one arm down and hoisted her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he pulled her close and kissed her.

He pecked down her neck until he placed one long, open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck, and she gripped him even tighter with her legs. He grunted gently against her skin.

He nipped her collarbone and she released her breath slow and long and quiet. She relaxed and went nearly limp—how strange it was that this physical part of their love had, none too long ago, been new and different and almost alien to them was now one of the only places that either of them felt comfortable anymore. He was _familiar_ and he was _real_ and she was happy with him and practically nowhere else.

He trailed his fingers up the dip in her spine and made her arch and shiver involuntarily; when he brought his hand around and cupped one breast her breath caught in her throat.

"You latched the door, yes?" She breathed huskily.

"Yeah."

"Good."

She took him by the back of the head and kissed him hard and moved around and sat her in the shallow water.

o…o

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A little teensy fluff scene there for you to counteract the absolute lack of fluffy stuff in this story so far. I hope you enjoyed it! It's true that some people can't float. I think it has to do with body fat content, or something like that. My dad can't float and sinks like a rock—just like Will does in this story. He _can,_ however, swim; as long as he's moving he can keep himself above water, but he can't just float. My cousins and I used to amuse ourselves by asking my dad to float in my grandfather's pool, even though it wasn't really all that funny.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed what you've read, and remember look for the next chapter this Friday. I'm still trying to get used to posting two times a week, it feels a little unusual. Ah well. Reviews, should you decide to leave them, will be muchly appreciated.


	11. The Hardest Choices

As other people have stated, Djaq is having a far more difficult time adjusting (or readjusting) to a life in Acre than Will, who has never been there until he came with her. Will has no connections there, whereas Djaq has all of these people who remember Safiyyah and have a lot of expectations for her. It can't be easy living in the shadow of a past life, can it?

Disclaimer: Djaq, Will, and the rest of the familiar cast that I might mention, are not my property, even though BBC cruelly decided to exclude the two of them from the third series. At least I'm giving them something to do.

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o…o

She rolled over in bed and covered her head with part of the sheet. She'd forgotten how easy it was to lose track of time sleeping during the heat of the day. Nobody _did_ anything in Acre or anywhere else when the sun was at its highest and it was so unbelievably hot outside. So everybody would pack up their things and stop whatever they were doing to eat the midday meal, and after midday prayers they would sleep until it was cool enough to be productive again.

But it was time to be awake and productive again and she didn't want to get out of bed or stand up or move or _anything. _The bed was nice and comfy and as long as she was sleeping her head was quiet. She just wanted to stay in bed all day. And maybe tomorrow, too. And the next day. If she could have her way, she'd've liked to have stayed in bed until she felt like getting up, which could conceivably be months.

This day had been horrible so far. She woke up alone, and immediately fell out of bed. She had a headache and a stomach ache. She missed breakfast. She was short with her patients, who snapped right back at her. Yesterday, it had rained—instead of cooling things down a little bit, all it did was make the heat wet. She sweated in her _sleep._

The servants were either listless or irritable all day from the wet and the hot. She could hardly blame them. Even Khalad was more than averagely cranky today, growling at her when she went into the kitchen for something to eat and waving his spoon over his head like he used to do before he would crack her with it. So she hissed insults at him in every language she knew how and kicked him in the shin like an obstinate little girl. She'd wanted to do that her _whole_ life, and all she needed was to be in a sufficiently bad mood to pull it off.

Khalad was never going to like her or even _tolerate_ her more than he absolutely had to, and she accepted that. They came to something of a quiet understanding not long after her return to Acre: she stayed out of his kitchen when he was there and he didn't crack her with his cooking implements when she _was_ around; and he wasn't overtly mean to her just so long as she didn't play nasty childish pranks on him. Except for today when she just felt like being an outright cow. He did nothing back except for return the swear words, then nurse his bruised leg while she stomped out of the kitchen with her hoard.

So she grunted and growled at the sun coming in through the window—as if this would somehow intimidate it into going away—and tried her best to ignore it.

Will was still asleep, too, but on the opposite side of the bed. The only reason _he_ wasn't in a nasty mood was because the weather left him too sick and tired to do much of anything except for glare in the general direction of anybody who bothered him, which was everybody.

Of course, the heat wasn't the _only_ reason for her own foul temperament; she turned away from him and faced the opposite wall, then sighed hugely.

There had been a tentative peace over Acre for some time, the truce allowing the Crusaders use of the port city just so long as they didn't attack it or hurt anybody, and _only_ so long as the peace talks continued. But in the last month or so it'd wavered. Now it was getting very close to a collapse—the fighting was closer. There were night patrols in the streets again, a city-wide curfew to be observed by everybody. There'd been a time when it looked like the presence of Europeans might be less feared by the locals, but as she'd found out when Will told her that story some time ago, that wasn't the case; people still feared Europeans, associated them with Crusaders, and hid from them.

And as the fighting grew closer, things only got worse. The conflict was never further than the edges of her awareness, but these days it was closer, constantly in the back of her mind. Trade caravans to neighbouring cities would be interrupted or stopped, rather than run the risk of encountering the Crusaders who'd think little of cutting them down. Among the patients she saw, more than the usual amount were European—it used to be rarer, and every so often a new arrival from the docks would be directed to the house of the Lady Physician, because she was one of the few people who would treat Europeans and could talk to them. But now there were more, often injured and in need of care.

People seemed to find more and more reasons to sneer at Will, too—and at her for being married to him. It was somewhere between mild disgust and utter hatred. It made it hard for her to sleep at night.

The war and its proximity to her life hung over her head like a big heavy raincloud.

_Lots_ of things hung over her head like a big heavy raincloud.

Since shortly after she and Will were married, Bassam had begun bringing up the prospect of the two of them setting up house somewhere in the city. Use her dowry money to build a place to live and start a family and set up a permanent _life_ together in Acre. He seemed content at first to let them do it in their own time, but she knew that she would, eventually, have to tell him that it had never been her intention to stay in Acre to begin with.

But how was she supposed to do that? He was so happy that she was here, his old heart glad that Safiyyah was back in his life and his house—_so happy_ that he hadn't even realized that Safiyyah wasn't the one living there. How was she supposed to tell such a dear, sweet old man that she stayed in Acre and continued to live here only because of some self-imposed obligation on her part to pay him back for raising her?

She'd loved him when she was a child, and, she supposed, she still loved him now. But it was a nostalgic, long-gone love—almost like an old childhood crush. There would _always _be love and affection in her heart for Bassam, and she would _always_ hate herself, the littlest bit, for leaving him the way she did. But it just wasn't the same love as she once felt. She didn't know if she'd ever been able to feel it again.

Djaq was in denial of this for a long time. She only came to realize the reality of it in the last few months when his urging for her and Will to get a house together, for Will to set up a client base for his carpentry, for them to begin their _lives_ together in Acre. It was persistent and he had no idea he was really bothering her with his insistence, but every time he mentioned permanency here for the two of them, it made her seize up and have to fight all of her ingrained flight instincts. It just made her want to turn tail and run—run away, and keep running, just like she did once before.

Because Bassam expected that she would stay here. He expected 'grandchildren' from her for him to spoil. He expected her to leave her life as Djaq-the-woman behind and be content with a life as Safiyyah. He _expected_ so much from her without really even knowing what it was that _she_ wanted. She didn't know that she'd've ever been content with a life here forever, even when she was younger. Sooner or later the itch would have come to her feet and she'd have had the urge to move on.

She _had_ to tell him; this she knew. It was unfair to keep this secret from him. The time had long come for them to go back to England—she denied it until now. But _now_ it was best to tell him. This just wasn't the place for them, either of them.

She just didn't know how to go about doing it.

Other things bothered her, too.

Gabrielle.

She was back from Ramla with her husband—they went back and forth between both cities for his trading—and she came to see her today, just as cheerful and perky as ever. Never mind that Djaq was patently _not_ in the mood to see _anybody_ who wasn't actively bleeding or dying, and even then only under protest; there was something about seeing people in a good mood that made her all the angrier whenever she was cross herself. But she saw her anyway. Her friend had told her that she had some news for her. So she pretended to be happy to see her and took her into the courtyard to talk.

"What is it?" She'd asked. "What's happened?"

Her friend grinned from ear to ear, a smile so wide that Djaq was sure it would break her face right in half. For a few moments she actually thought that something wonderful had happened and she was eager to hear the news.

"Well?" She prodded. "Are you going to tell me?"

"I could make you guess."

She sighed. "Oh, don't do that. It was fun when we were eight, not so much anymore."

Gabrielle waggled her eyebrows.

"All right—so, it is something good."

"Oh, yes. Wonderful."

She couldn't even begin to guess and she didn't fancy trying, so she just decided to ask questions; eventually she'd ask enough that Gabrielle would just tell her what was going on. "Does it involve you being in Ramla at all?"

"I do believe…" she counted something on her fingers. "Yes, it was Ramla. It happened the last time I was there."

Djaq blinked.

"All right. Does it involve you alone or more than just you?"

"Oh, I couldn't have done it alone."

A feeling of dread crept into her stomach.

"Well, it depends on what you believe—there are some people who believe it could be a one-person job under the right circumstances." Then she giggled to herself, highly amused at her own little joke.

Djaq turned it over in her head a few times.

"You are pregnant, aren't you?"

And then Gabrielle had smiled even wider and nodded, her eyes crinkled at the sides with silent glee. She looked so very happy, her face and eyes glowing, her smile enormously wide; she placed her palm flat on her belly and it was then that Djaq detected a very definite swelling underneath her clothes. She knew precious little about pregnancy, except for _how_ it occurred and _what_ it produced and how best to prevent it from happening—but she knew enough to figure out that it would take some months for a swelling that size to appear.

"How long?" She asked.

"Four months. I did not want to tell you until I knew it would keep," she said. "I am pregnant!"

All sorts of thoughts had raced through her mind at that point—too many and too quick for her to catch any of them—and none of them were happiness.

Her friend had changed in their time apart; she had to accept that and she did her best to do so. But so many things about the adult Gabrielle seemed to be so completely at odds with everything she knew about her friend. When they were young, Zahra was just as fiery as she was, rebellious and strong and mischievous. She never, ever would have expected _that_ girl to be _happy_ about being married and starting a family. It just didn't seem… _right._

Of course, being married herself was completely at odds with the way _she_ used to be.

She wrestled for several moments with all of those sad-frustrated feelings inside of her before doing what she'd grown accustomed to doing since returning to Acre. She screwed a smile onto her face and pretended to be happy.

"Congratulations," she'd said through ground teeth, hugging Gabrielle as tight as she dared and hoping that she wasn't noticeably shaking. "I am _so_ happy for you."

"Thank you," she murmured back. "I did not know what you would think of this. But I'm glad you are happy."

With her chin hooked over her friend's shoulder, Djaq had clenched her eyes shut and grimaced. She tried to force herself to be happy for her friend—after all, she was genuinely pleased with the idea of being a mother and having a little life completely dependant on her and seemed not to pay any mind to the fact that she was going to be heavily and uncomfortably pregnant during the hottest months of the year.

But she couldn't make herself be anything but frustrated. She felt Acre itself slipping further and further away from her even as she still stayed in the same place. Will noticed this when she came back inside the house for their midday meal, but she didn't tell him. Instead, she snapped at him and told him to leave her be. After that, they finished their meal in silence, and when they went into their bedchamber they slept as far apart as they could with their backs to one another.

It felt weird and disconnected and it made the wordless frustration simmering just under her skin boil and boil and boil.

She clutched the sheets now and refused to roll over to look at him. He was still there—she could feel his weight on the other side of the bed—but she had no idea if he was still asleep or if he'd woken up. When it was hot enough, Will could sleep for worryingly long periods of time and occasionally had to be woken up so he'd eat something before he'd go right back to sleep again.

Inside, she felt this odd mix of angry frustration, and heartbreaking sadness. She was normally so good with words, thinking carefully of the right ones and voicing them in such a way that got her point across without such silly things as crying or other overly-emotional acts that she'd for so often thought were beneath her. But words failed her now. When she tried to come up with the words to describe her feelings in her head, the only thing she heard was a wordless scream, a cry of frustration. Nothing else.

She was going mad here, she decided.

She had to get out. That was all there was to it.

Lonely, sad, angry, torn. Frustrated, so _very_ frustrated. The only time she _didn't_ feel any of those things was when she was with _Will._ She loved him, and he was her link to the happiest life she'd lived in a long time. A happy life, with outlaws, in a rainy forest in England.

With her eyes clenched shut, she rolled over. When she cracked one eye, she saw Will was still there on his side with his back to her, motionless. Asleep, probably. She inched closer to him, as quietly as possible, and tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder. To her surprise, he reached his hand up and placed it over hers. He held it as he rolled onto his back and looked up at her hovering over him. He looked tired still and his face was pink.

"Was wondering if you'd come over to my side first," he said casually. "I'd've gone over to you in a minute if you hadn't."

He propped himself up on his elbows for a few seconds before he decided that this took more effort than he was willing to expend and collapsed back into the bedding.

"I am sorry," she croaked. A lump formed quite unexpectedly in her throat and it was hard to talk around. "For—everything. I am sorry."

Pause.

"I seem to be saying that a lot lately, don't I?" She asked rhetorically, a bitter forced smile on her face. The smile drooped and she sighed shakily. "But I mean it."

"I know."

"I do not mean to be so horrible."

"I know."

"I don't know why I act like I do."

"Do what I do," he offered. When she looked puzzled, he smiled weakly. "Blame it on the heat."

She laughed just as weakly. "Perhaps that is a part of it."

"What's the other part? Parts?" This time he sat up and stayed up.

"Everything."

"That's broad."

"If I start I will not stop."

"That's fine. We have all day."

She didn't say anything.

"You're upset about her again, aren't you?"

There was nothing in the world she could hide from him, she decided. He saw right through her, through all the walls and defenses she put up, as if he could hear her thoughts.

"She is a stranger. It is not just that she is with child, and I never would have expected that from her—it is _everything,_ all on top of itself. Like a tower. Acre and everything in it—Bassam and Gabrielle, the people, the customs, and even the _pigeons_ do not fit me anymore."

Sick heat rose in her throat and her face. That was the furthest the tears ever came—she would _not_ cry.

"All I am, all the time anymore is angry, angry, _angry,"_ she paused to look at Will, and his eyes were a little wide, but he remained silent and let her continue on. "I am _angry_ that I feel that I have to pay back Bassam. I am _angry_ that Gabrielle has changed so much that I hardly recognize her anymore. _Angry_ that I cannot be in Acre anymore. I am even… even with _you."_

"With _me?"_ Those big green eyes went even bigger and he looked like he was actually afraid. "What for?"

She looked away from him and tried to tug her hand back, but he wouldn't let it go.

"It is stupid," she said. "And baseless."

He squeezed the hand gently.

"I am angry that you let me stay here," she admitted quietly. She felt herself beginning to cry but it came up as a bitter, choking laugh. "I am angry that you just sat there and let me do what I wanted. At the time I thought it was the best thing, but even then you knew it was not right. But you just sat there and looked at me and told me that I should do whatever I wanted. I am cross that you let me make my own decision." She scowled deeply at him. "Damn you! Why didn't you stop me? Why didn't you _fight_ to keep me from staying here?"

He didn't answer.

"I would not have listened anyway, would I?" She answered it herself.

"No. You do what you think is best, _whatever_ you think is best. You have your own sense of what's right and wrong. You are very much your own person. Once you've made up your mind about something you won't listen to anybody, regardless—so what good would fighting do?"

She rubbed her eyes, but they were dry.

"That you do what you think is best no matter what anybody else thinks—that's one of the things that makes me love you so much."

"I am so angry that I stayed. Angry at myself. And that anger just turns right around to other people." She felt her lower lip quiver. "To you. And you do not deserve it."

He reached out to touch her face, and instead of recoiling she leaned into it.

"We neither of us can live here," he told her softly. "We _both_ know that. I don't belong here and I never did, and _you_ can't be two people for the rest of your life. You don't belong here any more than I do—you said it yourself, Safiyyah belongs here, not you. You can't be yourself here. Acre is no place for a woman named Djaq."

She felt her lower lip quiver. He was right and she knew he was right. She'd been thinking the same way for a long time—they couldn't live here, neither of them were fit for this place. They were a pair of _very_ displaced fish out of water here. She was so, _so_ homesick—even worse than when she first left Acre to pursue a life as a battlefield physician. And then, four years later when she and her comrades were captured and taken prisoner, shipped over land and sea like animals, traded from one 'master' to another for more than a year before she ended up in England… then she'd felt more angry than homesick. She was so busy in England as one of Robin's gang that she never had time to miss the world she so rashly and willingly left behind forever.

But now that she had the time to stop and think about things, and she felt that crushing homesickness—a uniquely uncomfortable feeling twisting her guts.

She never felt homesick for Lod, the place she was born and lived with her brother and her father until he died; that place had so few good memories that she felt no attachment to it when she left. Nor had she felt homesick for Acre when she left it—then she'd been so utterly _mad_ with grief and anger at the death of her brother and the loss of her friends. She didn't even feel homesick for the desert when she was taken slave with her comrades and passed back and forth to cruel masters for over a year before being shipped across land and sea all the way to England.

Strange that the only place she'd _ever_ felt homesick for… was England.

She reached up and clutched the hand on her cheek in both of hers. Her own hands quivered. When she blinked, she felt hot tears run down her face; she wiped her cheek with her sleeve.

Will leaned forward, and planted a tiny little kiss on her forehead. When she didn't pull away from him, he returned and kissed her again, his lips lingering against her hair.

"We cannot stay here," she whispered.

"I know," was all he said.

o…o

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The story is getting progressively more sombre. This really is a departure for me because I tend to write more light-hearted and fluffy stories with a few giggles in them. Poor Djaq feels utterly trapped by her self-imposed decision and her own past. Even though I wrote the story, I still find myself feeling sorry for her. You just wanna hug her, don't you? Except you don't because that's Will's job.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Any feedback will be muchly appreciated, but of course it's never, ever demanded. The story will be updated on Tuesday as scheduled.


	12. Complications

My mother had surgery the other day. (Knee surgery, she's fine. Just a lousy patient.) Guess who played Night Nurse last night. Guess who didn't get to bed until five this morning. Guess who has to do it all over again tonight. So this chapter is incredibly late, and Friday's probably will be as well. My mother is a terrible patient. Anyway, the story is getting sadder and sadder. If Djaq wasn't so stubborn, they'd be back in England by now.

Disclaimer: Djaq and Will are the property of the creators of the show. I don't mean any harm by borrowing them, seeing as they're not actually using them anymore.

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o…o

"_Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"_ –Epicurius

o…o

Soldiers marched the streets below their window. Their torches threw flickering orange-yellow light and dancing shadows onto the eerily darkened buildings. Acre was usually lively even after dark, the people keeping lighted torches and continuing their activities well into the night. But the soldiers were back, guarding the city at night, and imposing a curfew on all of them. No lights after dark—everybody indoors.

The fighting moved closer again. During the day they could stand on the rooftops and look out and watch the armies marching. The Europeans were growing tired of the restrictions that the Saracens were putting on their use of Acre. They were greedy bastards, Will thought quietly. They'd given the Crusaders and Europeans use of this important port city as a good faith gesture, in an effort to perhaps encourage peace.

That was all they wanted: peace.

It was all _anybody_ wanted. Even the King himself was tired of the fighting, only wanting to fix the problems he caused and go back home.

Except the Crusaders still made Acre their newest target, moving closer and closer in their determination to seize it and keep it for themselves. The fighting grew close enough now that injured soldiers from all sides of the conflict began to turn up as patients for the city's physicians because the city itself was closer than the battlefield hospitals. Djaq was the only physician in the city willing to offer medical attention to the wounded Europeans, and Bassam's house had started to become something of a refuge for them.

Will still, for the most part, kept away from them. The visiting young soldiers would see him and notice he looked just like them with his fair skin and them immediately try to strike up a friendship with him, thinking perhaps that he was 'one of them'. It was tiring to explain over and over again that he was _not_ a soldier and had never _been_ a soldier and thanks very much but the physician they are so shamelessly eyeing happens to be _his wife._ Sometimes it was just all-together easier to jabber away in rapid Arabic and pretend that he couldn't understand them.

Still, if Djaq asked for help with something, he'd tried his damndest. The household staff ran off whenever there were Crusaders in the house—all of them except for Ayla, who was never bothered by anything, hid in the servant's quarters at the other end of the house opposite the courtyard and waited until they decided it was safe to come out—and Bassam knew less than nothing about medicine so Will was the only logical choice to help. But there wasn't much he could _do_ to help.

He'd grind his teeth and talk the panicking soldiers calm when he could and for the most part tried to think about everything else in the _world_ except for their injuries. There were times, though, when he'd try to help, take one look at some particularly gnarly wound, and faint dead away. Now whenever she had a patient who seemed to be suffering from something more than a simple cut, she wouldn't ask for his help at all rather than risking letting him faint and hit his head on the table again.

He'd never get used to seeing it, he thought. Baby soldiers and ancient grizzled old men and men in between, all trying to square their family debts to the crown or earn a better life for their children by coming here to fight in this strange land against an enemy they didn't know. Some came selfishly, too, for some bloody glory; their taste for blood was more often than not staunched very quickly and those men, like all of the others, would soon devote all of their time not to preserving the Holy Land or whatever drivel they'd been told, but to simply surviving.

Locals began to leave Acre, sometimes in massive groups. Tradesmen often abandoned their holds in the city to move themselves and their families elsewhere. Almost none of the acquaintances he'd made in the marketplace were there anymore; the kindly old grandmotherly woman who sold fruit and who kept wanting him to meet her granddaughter was gone, probably long with the granddaughter. She probably left during the night one night and she was gone without even saying goodbye. The once-lively market had become sparse and populated with Crusaders and the nervous merchants too poor or not scared enough yet to leave.

Of the people who left, Will's friend Ifran in the marketplace was one of them.

"It is too dangerous," he told Will when he came to bid him goodbye. "My son has no mother anymore. I do not want for Nasir to grow up without a father."

"Where will you go?"

"My sister, she lives north, where the fighting is over. We will be safe there."

Then he'd given him a set of woodcutting knives—finer tools than he'd ever owned or hoped to own in his life—and Will could think of nothing to give him in return, but Ifran hadn't given him the chance to do it. He left suddenly, and not long after that Will learned that the woodcutter had left Acre for good with his son. He'd never see him again, he realized.

He hadn't been as _close_ to Ifran as he'd been to his friends in the forest, but it still stung to see him go. He was a friend, and Will liked him, and now he was gone. He hoped and prayed that he would find a new and safer life wherever it was he was going, but even as he did so, he wondered what good praying would do.

He knew that many years before he even met her, Djaq had begun to question faith. He'd never had reason to question it at all, and so believed. Even when he saw the poverty and blind injustice in Nottingham, he still believed. Perhaps, after all, there was some greater purpose in all of this. But as he watched the so-called 'Holy War' raging around him all the time, he began to wonder.

If God was capable of stopping the evil occurring in this war, then why didn't he? Was he that callous? Or, did God _want_ to stop the war, but _couldn't_ he? Then perhaps he wasn't all-powerful as he'd always been taught. Or, what if he was neither capable nor willing to stop it? Then… why worship such a god?

Years ago he'd've heard someone talk the way he was _thinking_ right now and been frightened for such a person and for their soul. Not too long ago, either, he would have been surprised that such thoughts _occurred_ to anybody. God was omnipotent, God was omniscient—there was no questioning that and the 'proof' of it lay everywhere.

He only began to think about it recently, to _really_ think on it. All around them, all the time, where he once saw his 'proof' of his god, was _chaos_ and _madness._ If there was some divine greater purpose in all of it, a benevolent god might have let the people affected by all the madness _see_ the greater purpose. Certainly it would have helped—after all, what better thing to offer them than hope?

But no. That little seed of doubt, planted when Marian was killed and growing and flourishing in him ever since, was making him think and think _hard_ on it. There was no harm, perhaps, in praying—but there was little point in putting all of his hopes into prayer. Nothing would ever get done that way.

The war just took things from everybody and there was nothing to be gained from any of it. Some people lost their homes and their livelihood, merchants and tradesmen abandoning their routes to avoid the fighting; others sold whatever they had, took the money, and left to start new lives elsewhere; other people lost family, friends, and loved ones, often people who weren't soldiers but innocent people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The faces of grieving young widows, some younger even than he was, with their toddling young children and their tearstained faces, would stay forever burned in his mind along with the other horrors he'd witnessed.

Just how many of the casualties of war had had absolutely _nothing_ to do with the fighting itself? Widows and children, little old ladies robbed of their own children and families, people forced or frightened from their homes—of the patients brought to see Djaq who were injured in the conflict, for every one that was injured in battle there were three more injured just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And so the war raged on—and life, too, went forward.

The heavy sandals on the ground echoed in the empty streets. _Thop, thop, thop._ He leaned out the window as far as he dared and watched them.

"It is like being a prisoner," Djaq whispered. "The guards are supposed to be there to keep bad things _out,_ but it feels like they are there to try to keep everybody _in,_ too."

She was sitting on the other end of the windowsill facing him; their legs were tangled together as they sat and looked out at the city below. The room was hot and they sat nearly bare at the window in an effort to catch some of the breeze. Djaq reached behind her head and pulled her hair off the back of her neck. It was longer now, down to her back, but uneven from self-done and haphazard haircuts in the forest.

A few months ago he would have been reluctant to tell her that he was well used to Acre feeling like a prison; now that they'd reached an understanding between them that neither of them liked this place, he felt no trepidations as he spoke.

"Doesn't feel too much different than I'm used to it feeling," he said. "I always feel sort of…" he trailed off.

"Trapped," she finished for him, still looking out the window.

He nodded.

"The closest I would ever get to flight," she whispered, low and quiet and barely audible above the sounds of the marching soldiers below.

"What?"

He remembered when she told him that, the first time she'd showed him the aviary where her once-beloved pigeons were kept. She thought that training birds would bring her close to flying, and to the freedom he realized she'd always been craving in her life.

"I am close to the pigeons now—all I ever wanted to do was train them. I thought I could live free through them. After all, they can fly—they can leave the ground and fly away and go wherever they like. Freedom. Only… it is not freedom. They are caged. They only fly when Bassam wants them to. I do not want that. I want my _own_ freedom. It is all I _ever_ wanted."

Even with him, and even after they were married, Djaq was a private person. She guarded her feelings closely and rarely spoke this way. He had to figure out for himself what was going on inside her head, decipher her actions and her words to uncover the emotion behind them. She rarely spoke this candidly about her feelings. It was heartbreaking to hear her so sad.

"I cannot be free," she whispered.

"You _can _be free. Just not here. This house—this whole _city—_is one big cage, Djaq," he said. He didn't intend to sound harsh, but the words came out that way anyway. He knew that _she_ knew what needed to be done—she was just too stubborn to do it. He could never remember being frustrated rather than in love with her stubbornness before now. "I said it before, and I'll say it again. You can't even _be_ 'Djaq' here. And what good is it staying somewhere that you can't even live as yourself?"

"You are right—you are right."

She shook her head hard, her hair flying in all directions.

"We need to get out of here," she continued. "As soon as possible."

"I know."

There was a long pause. They'd had this conversation before, but Djaq always felt guilty at the prospect of telling her uncle about her intentions to leave. So he was less than willing to believe her when she said those things.

Then she sniffed, and he realized she was trying not to cry. He reached across and rested a hand on her knee; she put her own hand on top of his.

"It is not fair to either of us—mostly, it is not fair to _you."_

"I said I'd wait with you."

"But we should have left a long time ago, as soon as I realized that we could not survive here."

"You can't blame yourself."

Pause.

"I will tell Bassam in the morning—I promise," she whispered.

"D'you want me to come with you?"

"No—yes. Yes, please."

"You sure?"

Nod. "I do not want to do it alone."

"Then we'll talk to him in the morning." He turned off the windowsill and stood up. "But it's late now. C'mon, let's go to bed."

He offered a hand and waited; she looked at it before she took it, and then hugged him tightly with her face buried against his chest. She breathed shakily, which he knew meant that she was trying hard not to cry. He hugged her back, kissed her head. He felt her hand play at something on his chest—his wooden tag, faded and weathered and beginning to crack, still hung around his neck. He wore it constantly, at all times; he never took his tag off, she never took hers off. Sometimes they hid them under their clothes, and Djaq would sometimes hide her shorter necklace underneath a silver piece of jewellery, but that symbol, that link, was always closest to her.

In this world of wealth, their most prized possessions were wooden tags and wooden wedding bands.

Because that was all they valued here. They didn't belong here—they never had.

o…o

The next day didn't go as planned. She wanted to go see Bassam in the morning, after the breakfast, and talk to him about leaving. But it hadn't worked that way.

She and Will went to bed and curled up together on top of all the bedding—it was too hot even for the thinnest and gauziest sheets. She didn't dream at all, just slept heavily, but not for _nearly_ long enough. Somebody rudely roused her out of her very deep sleep sometime very early in the morning.

"_Lady,"_ she heard whispered over her head in Arabic—when had she stopped thinking of it as her native tongue?—but she tried to ignore it. _"Safiyyah, wake up! Somebody needs you!"_

She groaned, a long angry growl.

"_It is urgent."_

She pushed herself up on her elbows and opened her eyes. The yellow light from the lamp the servant was holding lit the entire room. She squinted.

"_What is it?"_

"_Crusader—he is hurt badly. There is a lot of blood."_

That woke her up. Instinct took over and she stumbled out of bed and went on a quest for clothing, gleaning information as she went. The man—very young, she was told—was hurt somewhere in a fight, and he'd wandered a long time through the desert. The imam at the mosque helped get the poor young man to this house, where the imam knew there would be a physician willing to attend him.

She tripped twice while looking for a shirt before deciding to take Will's tunic from the bedpost and wear that instead. It was either that or go topless.

"_This way—"_

"_Wait,"_ she said, then turned to the bed, rattling Will awake. "Will, get up."

"Huhn?" His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. "Whuh? Whu'z wrong?"

"I have a patient—downstairs—it is urgent."

He yawned enormously. "Whuh, d'you need help or somethin'? How's my fainting again gonna help?"

"It won't," she said frankly. "But if I cannot sleep, then neither shall you."

It took a full beat before he understood what she'd said.

"Hey!"

She could hardly resist a giggle. Then she leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "Good morning, my love."

She trotted downstairs quietly and saw the soldier on the table in the apothecary lab where she saw to her patients. He was groaning quietly in pain. She rolled up the sleeves of Will's tunic and went right to work.

He didn't look too badly injured, at least not from his wound. The broken-off shaft of an arrow was stuck in the poor young soldier's shoulder—in itself it was a bad injury, but not something that couldn't be fixed at a field hospital. But the rest of his problems were accidentally self-induced; he must have wandered away from the fighting and the injury got worse. Dazed, confused, and possibly delirious with a growing fever, he'd been wandering for a while in the desert. He was dehydrated and needed food, and dotted all over with little tiny cuts and scratches in varying stages of healing.

Instinct took over. She knew what to do and how to do it. Her hands and body worked on their own and she hardly noticed herself doing it. The Crusader had a fever, and his brain was most definitely cooking because of it. He kept leaning around to watch her and absently called her 'mother' and asked about some goat, and she humoured him and pretended to _be_ his mother and answered the questions about the goat.

She removed the arrow and cleaned the wound and closed it. The rest of his cuts were tended. Most of those were small and easy to treat, though she had to pick bits of twigs and grass out of some of them. Whatever had happened to him, he'd been wandering around for a long time without food for water, she realized. His skin was clammy and pale and his heart beat slowly. She forced water down his throat and pulled of his tunic and chainmail—all disgusting and wet from sweat and reeking of unwashed man—and patted his body with damp cloths in an attempt to get his temperature down.

When she was finished, she watched him all night. She refused to let herself fall asleep. Her eyelids started drooping and her head lolled off to one side or the other.

This had been her life for some time now. She sewed soldiers back together, usually alone without any help. The servants, except for Ayla, were too nervous of the Crusaders to offer their help, though Ayla _couldn't_ help her, and Will kept fainting or getting sick. She didn't blame him—it was a lot to take in. He offered help where he could but for the most part he couldn't do it.

The soldiers she saw seemed much younger than she remembered from her time as a battlefield physician. Because she was older now, she imagined; all of them seemed to bring to mind the blonde baby-faced soldier that still haunted Will. They came to her hurt and lost and frightened, much like they'd been when she worked in the field hospital. The wounded came in quietly, directed to her by sympathetic people who knew that she'd help the Europeans.

People here were still nervous of anybody with fair skin, always worried that they were Crusaders and would hurt them. Even after all this time, some people _still_ felt this way about Will. He mostly accepted that this was the reality—people leaped to their own conclusions about him just by looking, and if it ever bothered him he never let it show and never told her. They have every right, he said, to be nervous of him; Crusaders came in and upset their lives and their homes and their very existences. Their fear was a survival instinct, and he never blamed them for it.

She only wished she could feel the same way, but whenever she saw it in the city or when they were out together—people making nasty faces at them, whispering as if they couldn't hear or understand, it made her blood boil.

She thought her impending speech over and over in her head. She'd promised Will before they went to bed that she _would_ tell her uncle _today_ of her decision. She had to leave Acre and she'd never intended to make her stay permanent in the first place. It was her own fault for not telling him sooner, and it only made the prospect that much harder.

All she would have to do would be to explain it to him as best as she could. He was a kind man, and he loved her—but he loved the Safiyyah girl she'd once been, not Djaq-the-woman she'd become. She had no doubt that he could _learn_ to love her as Djaq, but she simply couldn't stay here any longer.

At least Will would be there to urge her along. She'd lose her nerve were he not. She just had to be strong.

She thought and kept herself awake for a long, long time—she checked her patient, paced around the apothecary lab, checked him again, thought on her feet to keep her body and her brain occupied.

But she fell asleep anyway. She sat down to check her patient and the next thing she knew, she was being gently lifted away from her table. Light poured in through the laboratory windows and her whole body felt heavy. Will was behind her, carefully trying to pick her up without waking her.

"Unhand me," she murmured, "you know not whom you grope!"

She could hear him chuckle quietly.

"It's all right, Djaq. He's fine. Come on, come to bed and get some sleep."

"Bed? Is that all you ever think about?" She giggled.

"Maybe," he teased.

"Where's… where is he?" She asked, rubbing her eyes.

"He's fine—he's in the dining room and Ayla is feeding him. She kept an eye on him while you were asleep. Nobody had the heart to wake you up."

"He was hungry? Oh, that is _wonderful,"_ she sighed with relief. "It means he is getting better. I was worried he would not eat."

"Nope, he's eating. Khalad threw a fit about it when Ayla took food for him, but you know her. Now she's fussing over him."

Djaq grinned. Ayla had taken to mothering her patients, particularly the very young soldiers who came into her care. She was so maternal and almost lovingly fussy about them that even the most frightened Crusaders would gratefully take her help. Maybe she reminded them of their own mothers, she thought absently.

She didn't have the energy to argue with Will as he gently pulled her away from the table and lifted her up in his arms. She looped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder.

"What time is it?" She yawned as he brought her back up the stairs.

"About midday. If you're hungry I can ask Ayla to steal some food."

"Oh, no thank you. I am too sleepy for that."

He placed her on the bed and kissed her softly. He slipped his shirt—the one she'd grabbed off the floor to go tend to her patient—off of her and tossed it aside. She wriggled out of her trousers and lay back down in the sheets. He followed her slowly and kissed her again, a gentle and chaste kiss on her lips and again on her cheek; she reached up one hand and traced her fingers over his forehead, down his cheek, and over his lips. He kissed her fingers, then sat up fully.

"I will still talk to him today," she said. "I promised I would, so I will."

"I know—and you will. Don't rush it."

"I can…" she tried to sit up, but decided she didn't feel like it and flopped back down. "No, I can't."

"Sleep first. You won't do any good if you can't even sit up."

"If you say so," she sighed, turning to snuggle down in the sheets.

She felt him kiss her once more on her forehead before leaving the room.

She slept off and on for many hours. She woke up for the last time with Will next to her in bed, snoozing off his lunch and waiting for the hottest part of the day to pass.

Supporting herself on one elbow, she watched him sleep there, peacefully. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, and every so often he murmured something. She softly brushed a bit of hair off of his forehead and traced his features with the tips of her fingers. Over his eyebrows, down the bridge of his nose, circling his cheek; she trailed her fingers down his long neck and couldn't resist kissing him there near the top of his chest where his tan ended.

Then she sighed and lowered to rest her head on his chest and yawned.

"You're not just gonna stop there, are you?" He asked.

"Mm, yes. Just to be horrible."

"If that's the most 'horrible' you'll be to me, then I think this will be a long and happy marriage."

She kissed his chest.

He rolled over her and towered over her, kissed her throat. She sighed and murmured softly, and twined her arms around his neck.

And then there was an urgent banging at their chamber door, and Will lowered his head and huffed quietly.

"It's like they plan to interrupt us, isn't it?" He sighed as he heaved himself off of her.

"It does rather seem that way, doesn't it?" She said, even as she sat up. It was tempting to ignore the knocking and go back to Will and his delicious kisses and his beautiful warm body, but something told her that she should answer it. She didn't know what it was but it felt… amiss. She dressed quickly, in her _own_ clothing this time, and went to see what was so urgent.

She expected to see Ayla or one of the other servants at her door, and was surprised to see Bassam.

"What's wrong?" She asked immediately, a feeling of dread coming into her stomach.

"It is Gabrielle," he said. "She is… here."

"Is she hurt?" She gasped, feeling her stomach begin to do acrobatics.

"She did not say. She said she needed to speak with you as soon as you possibly could, Safiyyah—and William, too. Both of you. Please, hurry."

Neither of them needed to be told twice. They ran down to the main level of the house where Gabrielle sat on a trunk, one big bag on either side of her, with her face in her hands. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were tearstained; she trembled violently.

When she looked up and saw them both standing there, she leaped up—quite quickly for a woman as heavily pregnant as she was—and hugged them both.

"Safiyyah—Safiyyah, he is dead!" She wailed.

"What hap—"

"He was supposed to be back a week ago and he never made it. They told me today!"

Djaq hugged her back, stroking her hair. She was dressed in her plainest clothes, undyed and undecorated tunic and trousers; a plain veil had come down off of her hair, hanging limp and lank over her shoulders and back.

"What, who? Slow down and tell me, Gabrielle, what?"

"Esmail!" She gasped. "He was accompanying a caravan from Ramla—and, and he… I knew it would happen! He never listens to me!"

And the bottom of her stomach dropped out all the way.

She'd met Gabrielle's Esmail only twice since their reunion after her wedding, and though Djaq didn't know him well enough to say whether or not she _liked_ him, he was nice enough and he made Gabrielle happy. She loved him, and now…

Her brows furrowed. To lose a loved one was the worst pain in the world—she could hardly fathom how she'd feel if something happened and she lost Will. No, she _couldn't_ imagine it. But to see Gabrielle, newly widowed and heavily pregnant and lost and frightened, broke hear heart. Her friend was huddled in between them, sobbing like a small child and trembling.

Seeing her like this brought up uncomfortable memories of Robin and Marian. Gabrielle was just as anguished, in just as much pain. Her wails and cries were a vocalization of Robin's anguish that fateful day so long ago. And it was just as hard this time for them to see and hear it—it still hurt to see someone they cared about in so much pain, to have lost someone so important.

She was so frazzled and panicky that she had to bring Gabrielle into the apothecary and mix up a tonic to calm her nerves. She still cried for a long time after that, blubbering and dribbling into Will's shoulder until his shirt was damp. Between sobs, she told them both the story.

Many merchants were shutting down their caravan operations—it was too dangerous to traverse the desert when many caravans were being disrupted and ransacked, the people travelling with them hurt or enslaved or killed. It wasn't worth the loss of life or the loss of goods to keep the caravans running, and August was too hot to take the longer alternate routes through the desert. Esmail was among some of the last merchants still running his caravans.

He accompanied the caravans himself, Gabrielle told them, to make sure they'd make it from one place to another safely. What kind of a man would he be to ask others to make a journey that he wasn't himself willing to make?

"I told him that I was worried, I did not want anything to happen to him, or to anybody else. When I told him that I was pregnant he promised to stop making the trip himself once it was closer to time for the baby to come."

She sniffled and Will offered her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and accepted Djaq's tonic. She swallowed it all in one go, gagged briefly at the taste, and then continued.

"I am closer to the baby now—six months. When I told him I did not want him coming and going all the time anymore, we fought. And then he—he told me he would make one last trip and then we would go back go Ramla together and I could have the baby there in peace. And then… he left. And I found out that he… he was…"

She dissolved again into tears.

"It is too dangerous to trek to Ramla. The Crusaders don't look before they ambush caravans, but Acre is not much safer. I have sent word to my family, but they might not receive the message. I do not know what to do!"

She cried again. She cried and cried until she was exhausted and the herbal tea Djaq had given her took effect and she drifted off to sleep. A bed was made in one of the guest's bed chambers and Gabrielle was left to sleep up there with the things she'd taken with her.

"The poor woman," Will said gently.

"I cannot imagine being her."

"What's she gonna do?"

She didn't answer; while Gabrielle was telling her story, Djaq had been coming to a conclusion in her head. She couldn't leave her friend all alone—even though she didn't feel nearly as close to her as she did when they were younger, she still couldn't just _leave_ her in her condition. That would have been wrong in all _possible_ ways.

He wasn't going to like it, but she had to tell him.

"She will stay here," she said softly. "With us. She is in no condition to allow safe or quick passage to Ramla and the war is far too close. When after the child is born and when it is a little older, perhaps we can arrange for her to leave and stay with her family."

"'We'?" He repeated.

"Yes, _we._ Gabrielle has nobody else in Acre, just us."

"I don't mean to sound selfish but… what about _us?"_

"Will—"

He sighed.

"I know you want to do what's right, and I know you want to help her. I do, too. But, Djaq… be reasonable. The only thing we could possibly do would be make sure she gets to her family safely. And what about _us?_ You said it yourself, you have almost nothing in common anymore with Gabrielle."

"You expect me to just leave?" She hissed at him, suddenly angry. She gave him a shove. "Leave her here for goodness knows what to happen?"

"No—of course not! I don't want to do that, either, but," he moved around to stand in front of her as she tried to slip away. "Listen to me, what _can_ we _do_ for her?"

She didn't answer. She didn't know what, if anything, she could do for her old friend. She was widowed and pregnant, and she felt a certain obligation after years of youthful friendship to take care of her. But she didn't know _how._

"One of the things I love about you is that you never turn away people in need. You have such a sense of honour."

She looked away from him, but he reached a hand under her chin and tilted her head up to look at him.

"But for once, Djaq, please—think about _yourself._ Think about what's best for _you._ We've decided we can't stay here, that's just out of the question. I understand you want to help her, but how much do you have to sacrifice to do it?"

"All I want is to make sure she has the baby healthy," she said.

"And then what?" He demanded, his voice cracking as it rose. "Will you make sure the baby survives its first year, too? Make sure it learns to talk? A few months will become a few years, and then we'll _never_ leave. It goes against _everything_ you believe in, but please, for _once_ in your life think about _yourself!"_

He was pleading, begging her to reconsider. And she wanted to—the last thing in the world she wanted right now was to stay in Acre. She just wanted to leave this place, and leave the long-dead memory of Safiyyah here, and go back to England where she and Will belonged.

She didn't know which part was right—was she _really_ doing the right thing by trying to help Gabrielle, even though she had no idea how to even _begin_ doing so? Or was it best to just go, tell Gabrielle and Bassam of their plans and then leave Acre as soon as possible?

She didn't know. She couldn't think.

And before she even knew which answer was the right one, she'd already told Gabrielle that she had to stay with them until she had her baby. Will said nothing to it, and she didn't know if he understood or not, but he remained quiet and voiced none of his concerns. If she couldn't make up her mind as to which option was the right one, the least she could do would be to _do_ something while she was being indecisive.

o…o

0…0…0…0…0

Just when it looks like they might finally go home, a monkey wrench has been thrown into Djaq and Will's plans to leave. It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? Djaq is going crazy, Will is losing all of the very tentative connections he ever had to Acre, and now they have to stay. Djaq will always do things for others at the expense of herself, I think.

Anyway, sorry again about being so late today. I feel like such an awful person for it! I'll try my damndest to post on time on Friday, but my mother is going to need near-constant care for the next two weeks. Since my sleep schedule is odd (I sleep during the day mostly), I'm the de facto night nurse.


	13. Nevermore

Yay for finishing chapters _before _posting them—in between running about like a crazy person playing Nursey-Nurse-Nurse-Nurse for my mother, I managed to proofread and edit this chapter on time. And geez, this chapter is madly depressing. I don't want to give anything away, but I nearly cried writing it. That's pretty bad. So I have to do this.

**Warning:** **This chapter focuses greatly on some very dark themes, on heavy angst, and a major tragedy.** It may be triggering or upsetting for some readers. If tragedy really, really bothers you, you might want to wait until next week. (You'll probably be able to glean the gist of this chapter from that one.) There is no gore or sexual violence, but it's nonetheless sad material. Fair warning.

Disclaimer: I don't own _any_ of the characters you see being used here. At least, not the ones you recognize. I am gaining no profit from their use, so you have no grounds to sue me.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

He didn't dare tell her to her face, but he _knew _that _she_ knew that he was almost resenting her for her decision to stay longer in Acre. He understood that he she wanted to help her friend, and in truth he'd have done exactly the same thing if Gabrielle came to _him_ for help. But that didn't mean he was happy with the decision she'd effectively made for both of them. They were going to _stay here_ until Gabrielle had her baby.

And he wasn't happy about it.

He knew why she'd done it and he probably would have done the same thing if someone he loved needed help, and that only made him feel _worse_ for feeling so resentful and cross with her. After all, that's what he'd _been_ doing in the forest—helping people. That's what they were all about, wasn't it?

Except anything that kept them chained to this place was something the caused resentment and anger to simmer in his gut. It was delaying their return to England, their return _home_ to the life they both loved and missed.

He _could_ very well just pick up and leave Acre. It was possible and it was well within his rights and his power. Living here, all but friendless and still not entirely comfortable with a populace that wasn't entirely comfortable with _him_ was taking its toll on him. He risked madness if he stayed any longer. But his desire to get out of this place was surpassed only by his love for Djaq. He absolutely couldn't leave her.

But he was still cross—not so much with _her_ as with the decision she'd made.

So he kept away from her, just to keep his frustration and anger under control.

They were growing… _apart._

People were beginning to notice the difference in behaviour between them; where they'd once been close and openly affectionate, they spent far more time avoiding one another. Will would go off on a long ride and be gone for most of the day, while Djaq would stay behind in Acre. Then they'd switch off. Some days the only times they saw each other were when they shared a bed—and even so, they'd sleep back-to-back and not touch or even look at one another.

He hated that feeling, the feeling of being so disconnected from her. It was the first time since she came into his life that he wasn't practically attached at the hip.

When they were 'just' friends and members of Robin's gang, they were still _close_ together. They went on deliveries together, ate sitting close together, did their everyday tasks in close proximity; to call their relationship 'close' was a gross understatement. They even _slept_ close together, just a fraction closer to one another than any of the others slept to anybody else—a subtle difference, but a noticeable one. After they'd begun sleeping together, they slept practically one on top of the other. _Something_ on them had to be _touching_ the other while they slept. It felt unnatural and strained not to.

Now they barely acknowledged the other existed at all. They were cold and distant and, for the first time _ever,_ it seemed, they were two different people. They didn't outright fight, but… there was a rift between them.

And he didn't know how to begin to fix it.

Gabrielle was still too shaken up and sad and lost, not at all like her former cheerful self. She'd stopped crying and was mostly sullen and quiet, with one hand on her swollen belly. She reminded him of Robin, he thought, in the way she was grieving and so utterly heartbroken. He couldn't imagine what it felt like to lose the one person in the world he loved above all others.

She was listless all the time, tired, and slept a lot. This was _one_ area of medicine that he knew more about than Djaq—pregnancy. He'd seen it enough to know at least _some_ of what went on during it. Pregnancy took almost all of the energy out of women, making them sleep all the time and exhausted when they weren't sleeping. Sometimes it made them sick, moody, angry. They cried a lot—though Gabrielle had every right to cry.

Later on, pregnancy became horribly uncomfortable for almost all women. It was even _worse_ here with the heat. It was nearing September now—in England summer would just have been breaking and turning into autumn, but here it was the hottest it'd been so far. Poor Gabrielle, with her big pregnant belly, grew even more tired as the days went by.

He sighed and tossed pebbles into the courtyard fountain. His stomach felt as empty as a hollow drum. The Saracens called his month 'Ramadan', the holiest month of the year. They were to fast during the daylight hours for the _entire_ month. During the daylight hours, they couldn't eat at all, and at night their meals were the barest and simplest food. Will was no stranger to fasting, but 'fasting' in England usually meant giving up all but certain _kinds_ of food, rather than giving up all food all together. The only people exempt from the fasting were those who were very young or very old, ill, or, like Gabrielle, pregnant—people who _couldn't_ simply _not eat._

It made the days drag on, even longer than before.

The aviary used to be a special place for him, and for Djaq. They could pass hours in here among the pigeons, pretending everything was wonderful when in reality all either of them wanted to do was leave. Now he was just here because nobody else was.

The birds were enjoying their late-morning snacks of fruit and seed—_they_ didn't have to fast—and were mostly quiet.

"Hello."

Gabrielle was waddling almost comically into the aviary, one arm underneath her big belly to help heave her heavy load around.

"Funny how babies are such little things but they need so much _room_ in there," she croaked, trying to make a joke around her obvious discomfort.

"Here," he went over and took her free arm and helped her sit on one of the stone benches to take the load off of her feet.

"Thank you," she grunted, unladylike, and leaned back against the wall. "The last two months of this infernal pregnancy are going to last longer than the other seven put together."

"I'm sorry. Wish there was something I could do to help."

She smiled crookedly, absently rubbing her belly. "If you could make it sit still, I'd be eternally grateful."

"Hey, you in there!" He said with a mock-stern tone, shaking his finger at her stomach. "Your mother is very tired and wants some rest—so be quiet!"

She laughed weakly, but it never reached her eyes—he noticed for the first time that her face looked thinner and her skin paler. Her freckles stood out starkly like ink spots against her pale cheeks. Her eyes were hollow. Her smiles, whenever she _did_ smile, were always weak and shaky and half-forced.

With a sigh, she stilled her hand and looked away from him.

"I wonder if they know," she said absently, looking up. He had no idea what she was talking about.

"_Who?_ Know _what?"_ He asked.

"The pigeons. I wonder if they know they are caged."

He frowned, and opened his mouth to say something—then closed it quickly. There was a weird sort of poignancy to her words.

"What makes you say that?" He asked.

She shrugged, still looking around the aviary. "I am not sure. I just wonder—I am sure they know that there are people here around them, but I wonder if they understand that they are caged."

"I'm not sure. They're pigeons, I don't know if they even _think_ about it."

"I do not think they know."

"Don't they?"

She shook her head. "They seem happy enough. Or, they _seem_ so. And if they are happy, they probably do not realize they are caged. I do not think anybody could be happy knowing that they live in cages."

_That_ took him by surprise—there was far more truth to what she said than she probably even realized.

"Ignorance is bliss," he said softly.

She nodded.

"Sometimes I am jealous of you," she said.

"What for?"

Her smile was even less convincing and weaker than the last. "My whole life I have been in some cage or other," she said. "My family's home, and here, and in Ramla. They are all cages, where _other people_ kept me. I never knew it, for a long time, so I was… I suppose I was happy, if only because I did not know any better."

Then she looked over at him with sad eyes, and his heart broke for her.

"Even Esmail was a cage—I loved him and I was happy with him, but… being married was just another cage. A comfortable cage, and I was not lonely, but a cage nonetheless." Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly. "You were always free."

She seemed to have a misconception of his life before Acre, either because neither he nor Djaq volunteered any of the more gritty details or because she had her own rather more romanticized version of life in Sherwood.

"I was never _free,"_ he protested sternly."I've lived in just as many cages in my life as you have. And to be honest, I always envied you and Djaq—Safiyyah—because I thought that the nobilities all had far more freedom than I would ever know."

Gabrielle frowned.

"That is _ridiculous,"_ she said flatly. Then she paused. "You never had people dictating your behaviour, or telling you how to act around all sorts of people, what to say, or _not to say anything at all._ We were to be seen, and never heard. We were always being watched by somebody, there was always somebody about to make sure we behaved ourselves. It was a cage. I always envied people who were not followed all the time and made to stay in line."

He had no desire to play a round of 'my horse is bigger than your horse' by comparing their miseries, but she did have an extremely skewed imagining of what the life of a peasant was like. Maybe the peasants here led different lives. Or perhaps it was a distinct lack of reality—just as _he_ had a romanticized view of the lives of the nobilities. Will had learned that people were always inclined to think that _anything_ they themselves didn't have was far better than their own lives.

He always thought that nobles had far better lives than he did, that they were much freer than he was and could do anything they liked. But living with Robin and then having a taste of the lives of Saracen nobilities, he realized that even nobles had their shares of problems. They weren't, by any means, free—just kept in different restraints than he was.

To hear her say it, to know that she thought that way, made Will understand the way Djaq felt about her old friend. She was comparatively naïve, and believed things that he and Djaq had long learned were untrue.

She was quite different than they were. Not worse or better, just… _different._

"I never belonged to myself," he said. "Ever. I was never dogged or followed like you say you and Safiyyah were, but I was never _free._ Not like you think I was. Me, and my whole family—my brother, and my parents, and my grandparents before them—were all _owned._ We were stuck to the shop where my dad worked, and we were _owned_ by our lord. And everything we owned, the house and our tools and everything we made, belonged to him. That isn't freedom. Not at all."

"What of the forest? You cannot say you had no freedom _there,_ can you?"

He shrugged. "It was a different cage. Still a cage. No_body_ in particular owned me anymore, but I was still trapped, just by _being_ an outlaw."

She looked down at her belly, staring intently as she rubbed her hand up and down it.

"Is there such a thing as freedom?" She asked softly.

Even though she was much older than he was and had that big pregnant belly, she looked and sounded and _seemed_ so very much like a little girl just then—a little girl who'd just found out a very unsavoury truth about the world. No matter where people were or how they lived, they were never fully and completely _free._

Like the pigeons around them, they could never survive by themselves; they needed _others,_ they needed _people._ But nor could anybody survive crowded all the time, surrounded at all hours by all kinds of people always. That was stifling. Like Lucifer the stallion and his Lady Daisy, they needed someplace to live but also needed their freedom. Horses—and people—kept trapped somewhere all the time without being allowed to run around or roam were unhappy and went quite mad. Living—not simply surviving but _living_ and being _happy—_was a matter of finding the least-painful cage. To know a cage was there and not feeling trapped… that would have been happiness.

"I am still envious of Safiyyah. Even though there might well be no such thing as real_ freedom…_ she has not been in the same cage forever. She has had different ones than I have, perhaps not _more_ freedoms, just _different_ ones. She is maybe a bit less painfully caged than I am. Part of me hates her for it."

His eyes went wide at her candid admission.

"I do not _hate _her, I just…" she sighed. "She is not the same Safiyyah I remember. She has changed so much—become another person. She is so _different_ now. And stronger. I wish I could change like she did."

She looked so sad.

"It wasn't all happiness and rainbows," he told her. "It's a long hard road. Change never comes for free—it hardly ever even comes at a _good _price. You've got to pay for it, some way or other."

"I wish I could relate to her again. The girl that I remember—Safiyyah—is not the woman who lives here now. We have both changed so much, and where one of us has changed the other has stayed the same."

So Gabrielle also recognized it after all. Djaq had been agonizing over it, even before Esmail was killed. She hadn't been sure if Gabrielle would understand that they were two very different people now, no longer the little girls who'd once been so close. They were each trying to make a friendship work when they simply had no common ground anymore. They _both_ knew it and they _both_ understood it.

He sighed.

"I miss Safiyyah," she whispered. "This 'Djaq' woman is a stranger. We do not even have our _cage_ in common any longer."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He offered her a hand to help pull her up. "I wish I could say something that could help you, but… I can't even think of anything. I'm so sorry."

She smiled slightly, but this one looked neither forced nor faked.

"You listen. And for that, I am grateful. Thank you, Will. You are a wonderfully kind man. Djaq is lucky to have you."

Then she took his hand and he helped her to stand up; she heaved herself up on her feet, and then she stumbled. She clutched her belly and winced, whimpering softly. Then her eyes went wide.

When Will followed her gaze to the floor, he saw a growing puddle of thick liquid between her feet.

Waters.

She stumbled and her caught her on his arm, holding her up from collapsing on the floor.

"Hey, somebody help us!" He called out in a strained, hoarse voice.

He paced long, long hours like a nervous, helpless expectant father. There was little he could do to help and it simply wasn't done that a man _not_ the labouring woman's husband or male relative should be in the room at the time. So he waited outside the apothecary, feeling helpless and useless and scared to death. Women servants went in and out of the room quickly, carrying and big pots of water; inside, the sounds of cries and screams and sobs could be heard even through the stone walls.

They brought, too, clean linens in exchange for the bloodied and soiled ones. They took armfuls of blood-soaked cloths out of the apothecary, gory-looking lumps of cloth soaked with blood and bits of goodness knew what clinging to the fabrics. It troubled his stomach little, but his mind a great deal.

It was too early for Gabrielle to have her baby, he thought over and over again. She was how far, seven months? Eight at the most? It was too early. It wasn't her time yet. But her waters came in the aviary and the labours started, and Will at least knew _enough_ about pregnancy and childbirth to figure out that it was time. Clearly, the baby didn't care one way or another about it being 'time' or not and was going to come _now._

Djaq was in there with her, as was a midwife from the city to assist because Djaq knew very little about these matters and couldn't help her friend alone. Word was sent by bird to Ramla, many miles away, to Gabrielle's parents to let them know the news.

Now all there was to do was watch, and wait, and pray.

He couldn't do anything, though. He was useless. This was a woman's world, and he had no place in it.

So he paced until the floor wore away under his feet by the door to the apothecary. He heard the shouts and cries grow stronger and weaker. Sometimes she was quiet and her could hear the other women trying to encourage her, telling her it was going to be over eventually and she just had to hang on a bit longer; and then the pains would come again and he could hear Gabrielle's anguished cries and pleas to 'make it stop'. And the hours wore on as their friend's labour went on and on and on.

Eventually he had to leave the hall by the apothecary—he just couldn't stand it there, feeling more helpless and useless than he could remember feeling in a long, long time—but that terrible, heartbreaking sound of painful cries followed him.

He paced throughout the house in silence, trying not to think about what was going on, but no matter where he went it seemed like he could _still_ hear those horrible screams as clear as a bell. He supposed he could well have left the house for a while, just to get away from it, but he didn't feel comfortable abandoning Djaq and Gabrielle like that. If he stayed in the house, he rationalized, he could _be there_ for them somehow. So he walked the house, up the stairs and through the halls on every level, out to the roof, and back again.

Night fell and the kitchen staff brought the simple Ramadan dinner into the dining room, but Will wasn't hungry. He picked at a piece of bread until he tore it into tiny little crumbs and left it in a pile on his plate.

And then he went back to pacing the house. He didn't feel like playing chess with Bassam or carving anything because his mind couldn't concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. Djaq and Gabrielle completely dominated his mind. Every so often, he would hear a particularly loud shriek of pain and it would carry through the stone wall of the apothecary and the floors and ceilings in the house and it would rattle his spine.

He felt so _utterly_ helpless, feeling not unlike he did when he was a child and his mother starved to death; he could do nothing for her then and he could do nothing for Gabrielle now. He wished he could just go in and hold Gabrielle's hand—or just do _something_ to try to calm her down. Her husband should've been there with her, but the war had taken that away from her. Even though Djaq was there and she had the midwife, it just wasn't the same as having her husband there with her. He was _someone's_ husband, after all, and that must've counted for _something._ But he knew he'd just be another body in the way, useless and taking up space in that already crowded apothecary.

The night dragged on.

And on.

And on.

Hardly anybody did _anything_ at all. They were all too nervous and frightened. When he got tired of pacing and his legs couldn't hold him up anymore, he fell asleep on a couch in the entryway.

He didn't dream at all—no forest, no nightmares, no nothing. Just the darkness on the inside of his eyelids. He slept straight through the night, dead still, in black silence.

When he woke up, he felt almost more tired than he was before he went to sleep. His head throbbed and his mouth was paper-dry, but it was already light out and he couldn't have anything to drink. His throat felt almost _dusty,_ and he coughed a few times as he slowly got up from his spot on the couch.

He stumbled out into the courtyard in a half-daze, but his head cleared up quickly and suddenly when he saw Djaq, down on one knee next to the fountain, and he trotted over to her.

Her tunic was cast aside and she had her arms up, covering her chest; her head was leaned over the edge underneath the fountaining lion's head, letting the water trickle down her hair and he back. Next to her in a dirty heap was her tunic, blood-stained and sweat-stained and torn from where she'd clearly cut it up to use it for bandages. He could see as she breathed deep, heaving, shaky breaths.

"Hey."

He reached out to lay a hand on her bare shoulder, but she shook him off sharply and kept her head under the fountain.

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head; his stomach dropped. No, it couldn't be.

"Djaq?"

She cupped her hands under the stream of water and splashed it on her face, and then she stood up. It was then that he noticed her eyes and her face were red.

No…

Her lower lip quivered as she nodded slowly, and he felt all of the blood drain out of his face all at once.

"Very early this morning," she croaked before he could even ask her the question. "She laboured all night long, and she was so weak, and there was so much blood." She sniffled.

She crossed her arms over her bare chest and put her face in her hands. He dragged off his tunic, all wrinkled and slept-in, and handed it to her; she pulled it on to cover herself.

They stood facing each other for a long time, not speaking and barely even breathing.

Then they collapsed against each other, holding one another tightly. They sobbed hard, trying to hold each other upright.

He couldn't believe it. He'd been talking to her right up until she went into her labours, she was _right there_ in front of him—and now she was gone.

She was his first friend in Acre, the first person who was _nice_ to him. More than that, she was Djaq's childhood friend, a link to her past and to Safiyyah, and while they weren't as close as they'd once been and they never would be again, they'd still been _friends_ and now…

Now there was nothing.

He felt guilty for feeling so resentful of Gabrielle, that she was what kept them tethered to Acre—like somehow his anger had triggered her death.

He couldn't put it into words, so he didn't bother trying.

"She's gone, Will," she cried. "She is _gone."_

He cried, too, heaving sobs against her hair and gripping the back of the tunic she wore with both hands.

They buried Gabrielle the next day. They dressed her in her most beautiful blue-and-gold tunic and shawl. Her hair was long and loose all the way down to her hips. Her jewellery clung to her cold wrists and fingers, around her neck, and dangled from her ears. She would have looked beautiful dressed that way in life, but not in death. Her skin was gaunt and an ashen grey-tan colour, and even her freckles looked faded.

They'd never hear her laugh again, hear her funny stories again. Her smile was gone, and her glinting beautiful green-blue eyes. The pranks she played annoyed them endlessly, but knowing she'd never be around anymore to play them again just caused both of them hurt. Just… gone.

Her child was alive—a scrawny, skinny little baby girl. She had red hair and blue eyes like her mother. But she was premature and weak and didn't cry at all. She just slept, and slept all the time. She was too weak to be taken to Ramla to be with her grandparents like they'd planned on doing, so Will and Djaq decided to keep her until she was strong enough to survive such a trip.

It was the first time he didn't feel angry or resentful that their return to England was delayed. He felt utterly heartbroken, and all he wanted was to keep a little memory of Gabrielle around, for just a little while longer.

They called the newborn baby Khadidja, which Gabrielle said was what she wanted to name her just before she died.

But the little girl lived just a few days after her mother. On the fourth day, Khadidja quietly died, and they buried her at the fresh grave alongside her mother.

o…o

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Wow, that's just utterly depressing. I really hate angst and tragedies—I don't like reading them and I _definitely_ don't like writing them. But I guess I'm good at it. It tested this ending scene on a friend of mine, who isn't in this fandom and hasn't read the rest of the story, and he nearly cried, so I think I did pretty damn well. It's still depressing, though. I hope it doesn't ruin your day _too_ badly!!

I won't say where the story goes from here, just suffice to say that this is the absolutely lowest of the low points in the entire story—not sure if that helps or not. You'll see what happens next week. Until then, feedback is _always_ appreciated, but _never_ demanded.


	14. Veris, Philomena

Due to some last-minute editing, I'm afraid I'll have to recant an earlier statement I made about this story being sixteen chapters long. After shifting a few scenes here and there and doing some editing, the story has ended up being one less. So it's fifteen chapters. Thanks very much to everybody who's been reading so far and leaving feedback, as well.

Disclaimer: I must continue to admit that I don't own the characters that I am so shamelessly taking advantage of in this story. Though since the BBC hasn't been using them this season, I figure they don't mind me taking them out and playing with them.

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o…o

Ramadan wore on through September. It was still sickeningly hot. They were still fasting. His stomach hurt all the time but he didn't care too much. He was still grieving, still too sad and too angry and too frustrated to care. Acre, more than ever, felt like a prison. It was stifling and close and unnatural and uncomfortable and he felt like a trapped animal ready to gnaw his own foot off to escape his captivity.

Djaq wanted out, too, and he knew it. Even if she didn't have the fire or the drive to run away and keep running until they reached England like he did, he knew that she _had to_ get out. For her own good. This place, and the utter sadness and the bad memories it held, would soon enough destroy her.

Or she would destroy herself.

She was an entirely different person since Gabrielle's death. He understood her grief, and her anger. He remembered how he was when his father was killed. He went mad, crazy, wild, and filled with hate. He wanted to kill everyone and everything in the world to make them all _pay_ for the hurt they'd caused him. But his friends, and especially Djaq, had pulled him back from that edge of madness, and helped him through it. He still hadn't been quite right in the head for a while after that, but with their help he did, eventually.

But with Djaq now, it was different. She lived inside her own head, in a world of hurt and anger and pain and was unreceptive to everybody and any attempt to help her. All she was anymore was hostile, angry, sullen.

It scared him.

He was actually _frightened_ of her, the woman he swore he'd love forever. She was his friend and his companion and his lover and the way she was behaving now scared him silly. They stopped sleeping in the same bed a few days after the baby Khadidja died—Will thought it would just be a brief and temporary arrangement until she cooled off, when she was no longer dangerously emotional. But it lasted much longer. Two weeks now. He hardly saw her at all anymore.

He missed her. He missed her warmth and her tenderness, he missed talking with her, he missed her smile—he loved it when she smiled, and he'd give _anything_ in the world for her to smile again now. But he didn't want her to blow up on him again, so he gave her the space she needed and told himself over and over again that soon enough it would pass and she'd be back to normal again.

He just didn't know how true that was.

And it worried him.

He wanted to leave, he thought again for the thousandth time today. He wanted to go back to England and be poor again, and sleep in the dirt with the rest of the gang, and deliver parcels to the poor, and huddle in blankets when it rained on them and they all got cold and shivery. He wanted to wear scratchy wool that was never properly cleaned, and take off these silky, beautifully made Saracen clothes and never wear them again. He wanted to be an outlaw again. He wanted to be _happy_ again.

He wanted to go _home._

He turned the leather pouch over in his hands. The woodworking tools that Ifran had given him before he left Acre for safer territory were still pristine in their little pocket-loops and neatly arranged. He hadn't touched them—what with one thing and another, he'd been too busy and then far too depressed to want to do anything. It was a rare occurrence that he felt simply too depressed to even do any work at all. Work kept him sane and grounded, but… he didn't even feel like it.

This place drained all of the life out of both of them. They needed to get out of here. There was absolutely _nothing_ here for _either _of them—he wasn't sure there ever had been to begin with. So why were they staying?

She needed more time, he decided. He wanted to let Djaq heal before definite plans were made about leaving. In the meantime, he tried to be patient and understand as best he could her state of mind.

Most of all, almost more than anything else, he hated that he couldn't help her in any way. He tried for a little while, tried to hold her and hug her anger away, but she pushed him away. Sometimes she hit him, then covered her mouth in shock and apologized profusely, but when he got too close she'd recoil again.

"Please, just let me be," she'd tell him. "Leave me alone, just leave me."

It hurt him, but he'd reluctantly obeyed her request.

Really, what was it he'd been expecting to help her with? Did he want to kiss away her grief? That wouldn't've worked. Djaq wasn't some sad, weak, and simpering woman who needed protecting and constant comfort. To hold her and try to soothe away her sadness would just have made _him_ feel better, anyway.

There was nothing to do but wait.

He never felt like going into the market anymore. It used to cheer him up and make him feel closer to the people here, but now it just made him feel so very lonely. He felt no desire to be close in any way at all to Acre. He wanted to be as far from it as he could.

He was in the house, by himself, on his back in the other bedroom and staring at the patterns in the crackles on the ceiling. It was the room Bassam had given him when they first came to stay here. It felt lonely, much like everything else these days.

_Bassam._ Once the man stopped making him nervous, he'd thought he was nice enough, a benevolent man. He was kindly and gentle and generous, let the two of them stay in his house without a second thought. And for everything he did for young Safiyyah—taking her in, giving her an education, giving her a _home_ where she felt loved when she never felt loved or wanted by her own father—Will thought that Bassam was a good man.

And he _was_ good. Just… misguided.

He refused to accept that Safiyyah had grown up and become Djaq. She was a grown woman, not a little girl and not a young woman in her teens, and _certainly_ not the same as she'd been all those years ago. Her ideals had changed, her attitude towards life had changed, even her _appearance _had changed—even _Will_ realized that Djaq was not the same as Safiyyah, that they were two different people. The others in the house, the servants who knew her when she was Safiyyah, never alluded to how she used to be—it was only Bassam who insisted on living in the past.

It made him feel less for the man. He wasn't malevolent, he just… didn't get it.

And he still talked of them staying in Acre forever. Talk of using Djaq's—Safiyyah's—dowry to purchase a house and put a life together, to stay in this city and in this place with its warm winters and unbelievably hot summers, with the war just outside their doorstep, and periods of torrential rain and then no rain at all the rest of the time. Put up with those violent sandy dust-storms and sudden run-for-your-life thunderstorms, and all those snakes and lizards and poisonous little critters that could kill them—and big lions and frightening things that could also kill them.

He still expected them to stay here, set up house… have _children_ and build a _life_ together.

It was because of Bassam that they were here to begin with. Because Bassam helped Safiyyah when she was younger, and because of that, Djaq felt like she owed him—for his kindness to her when she was younger, and for running away and leaving him and everybody else to think she was dead. So she stayed to pay him back, and he stayed because he didn't want to leave her behind.

Even though he never actually made any real attempt to _make her_ stay, and certainly _he_ didn't _have to_ stay with her, it was hard for him not to quietly, discreetly resent the man.

That was all Will felt these days. Frustration, anger, loneliness, sadness, resentment. He kept to himself, away from Djaq, and he was lonely all the time, perhaps even moreso than he was when they first came here; he was frustrated and angry with being stuck here with no foreseeable way to escape; and resentment at Bassam, and Djaq, and everybody else that tied him here.

He abandoned the bedroom for the roof, where he sat alone. It was later in the evening and the heat of the day was settling away. He spent rather a lot of time up here, where he didn't have to be around anybody else in the house or talk to them or _look at them_ and he didn't have to see Djaq, either. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actively been trying to _avoid_ her, except maybe for before they made their confession.

Eventually, he figured, it would be dark enough and late enough to go back down into the house and go into his old room and go to sleep. He'd dream of the forest again, like he always did; dream of the freedom and the cool days, the towering trees—he always felt dwarfed and small by those massive trees; the desert made him feel small, too, but in a different way. The forest always made him feel small and protected, like a small child comforted by his parents. The desert just made him feel tiny and lost and alone. England was his home, and he missed it—and the forest.

His days dragged. He was bored all the time. He didn't know what to do.

The people in the marketplace were mostly gone now. Watching them passed some of the time, though he seemed to have acquired this unusually strong compulsion to spit on the people who appeared happy, just because he was so _un_happy. There were Crusaders in the city today, being boorish and speaking in broken Arabic or shouting at the locals in hopes of getting a message across. He'd acquired a dislike for Crusaders as well—he didn't like the way they treated the locals, didn't like the way they mocked the local practices and talked poorly of them, as if nobody could understand what they said.

But just about everybody in the market was gone now, and there was nothing else to watch. He walked back around to the side of the roof near the back of the house, where it backed into an alley.

And there was where he saw Djaq.

She left out through the kitchen door, looking to one side and then the other like she was trying to see if anybody was watching her. Then she let the door close behind her. She clicked softly, like she was trying to get someone's attention.

"Where are you?" She said softly. "Come on out—come out. It's all right, I am right here."

A wave of terror came over him—was she waiting for… what? Someone? Another man? Was she…? No. It couldn't be.

"There you are," he heard her say. He jumped forward immediately, then diving to his belly and creeping forward to look down.

Djaq was kneeling down now, reaching out to…

A cat.

Oh, it was an _ugly_ thing, scrawny with tatty orange striped fur; it was covered all over with bald patches, like its fur had worn away with age. It was missing part of one ear and its tail was crooked and had funny angles where it'd probably broken more than once and healed poorly.

But the cat waddled up to her on rickety old legs, walking under her hand as she petted it.

"Here, I have something for you," she whispered, pulling something out from her tunic. Scraps from the kitchen, probably. "Try not to tell on me," she said as the cat gobbled down his food. "They in there will not like it if they find out I am taking things for you."

The cat meowed. It had a croaky voice, for a cat.

Then she knelt to pick him up. The cat was ugly, left dirty pawprints and clumps of orange hair on her tunic and her shawl, but she picked it up anyway and cuddled it. She scratched his mismatched ears and let him rub his dirty head on her face and her neck.

What a sight to see, he thought to himself. A _cat_ of all things, the ugliest thing he'd seen in a long time, and she seemed so in love with it. He didn't know what to make of it.

He thought about Djaq and that cat well into the night, as he lay alone in bed and stared at the netting above him.

The cat was something to love, he thought.

Something to love…

He watched her with curious fascination for the next several days as she fed and cared for that ugly cat. She smiled, she was soft and gentle. She seemed like she _loved_ that cat, really loved it. It was…

Nice.

It was part of how she used to be, and he _liked_ it. He only wished that maybe she'd break out of this horrible grief-stricken state she'd been in. Maybe.

And then, some days later after Ramadan had ended—neither one of them participated the feasts and festivities that marked the end of the holy month and the fasting—he overheard some of the servants talking.

"_Where are you taking those scraps?"_ Ayla asked one of the younger girls.

"_Outside. To the cat. I thought it might be hungry…"_

Ayla sighed._ "The cat is gone. Somebody ran over it with a cart."_

Silence.

"_Oh,"_ and the girl threw away the scraps without another word about the cat.

Later he found Djaq outside in the courtyard by the fountain. She had her shawl up to her face—it was _still_ the same one from the journey to Acre; it was the only one she wore most of the time, as if it had some kind of significance for her—and she was sobbing quietly into it.

He didn't know if he should approach her. He stayed rooted to his spot, hiding from view, debating back and forth in his head whether or not he should. On the one hand, he was still a little frightened of her, didn't know if she'd snap at him—on the other hand… he didn't want to sit here and do _nothing._

"I know you are there," she said softly, looking up from her shawl.

"I'm sorry, I—"

But she wasn't looking at him anymore.

"Kind of an obvious question, but… is something wrong?"

No answer.

"For the love of god, Djaq, talk to me. You can't go on like this forever, neither of us can. I'll get down on my knees and _beg_ you to talk to me. Please. Tell me what's wrong, tell me what I can do to help—even if all I can do to help is go piss off and leave you alone."

She buried her face back in her hands again.

"I'm serious. Please, just _talk to me."_

He wanted so badly to reach out and grab her, though he didn't know if he wanted to shake her until she talked to him or hold her tightly, tightly.

"No."

"You've got to—"

"I do not _have_ to do anything. Just go away."

He stood quiet for a moment. "It's the cat, isn't it?" He asked cautiously. "I saw you feeding it and petting it. I heard it… it died."

"No," she answered sharply. "Not that cat."

"You can't pretend it was all nothing, I've seen you sneaking food to that thing for days."

"Shut up," she growled. "It was skinny and I fed it, it all means nothing—I have people dying all around me, why should I care about… about some stupid ugly cat?"

"Djaq, I saw you trying to take care of it. You were hugging it and snuggling with it."

She didn't say anything straight away.

"It meant something to you, didn't it? It had to."

Silence.

"Every_one_ and every_thing_ I have ever loved has been taken from me!" She shouted. "Everything, _everything!"_

She threw her hands down by her sides; he startled backwards.

"All of it—everything. The place I loved as a child, my brother—my friends. Zahra. Marian. The forest. Even the stupid cat!"

She threw a rock into the fountain and watched the fish scatter.

"How much longer can it be before everything else is taken away? Or if I am taken away from you?"

"It won't happen."

"You say that—but you cannot stop it. Neither of us can."

He put a hand on her shoulder; he felt her stiffen and tense up, but she didn't pull away or shrug him off. They were silent a long time.

"D'you wanna talk about it?" He asked softly.

"No, Will, I want to scream about it!" She yelled, ducking out from under his hand and pulling away from him.

He grabbed her wrist to keep her from walking away again. She turned around and pulled her free hand back—his whole body tensed up and prepared for her to punch him, but instead she looked up at him with hard eyes and froze in place.

"So scream," he told her. "Go ahead. Or hit me. I don't care. Yell, cry, scream, just do _something!_ Stop holding it in like this!"

She tore away from him and stood there, her fists at her sides clenched so hard she trembled. Then she shrieked. Clenched her hands in her hair and slowly sank to her knees as she screamed and screamed and screamed. It was blood-curdling and he could swear he felt the entire inside of his head vibrating from it; he clasped his hands over his ears and ground his teeth until she stopped.

Then there was silence. A donkey brayed in the distance but other than that there was no sound; a few windows opened and people popped their heads out to look.

Will slowly pulled his hands away from his ears. "Did that help?" He asked tentatively.

"No," she rasped, then cleared her throat. Her voice was still croaky. "Now I am angry and my throat hurts."

Then she pushed him away and went off into the house somewhere, sobbing quietly.

He didn't know what else to do. What _could_ he do?

When he climbed up to his bedroom for the night, he was shocked to discover the bed already occupied. For a moment he wondered if perhaps he hadn't accidentally gone to the wrong room—to the one and Djaq used to share.

"What the—?"

"I did not want to be alone," she said softly as she sat up. Her eyes were still red from crying and she looked so incredibly sad. "I cannot explain the way I have acted, and I can't even begin to try to excuse it. I do not know what is wrong with me. I cannot make the words come. But I have been so utterly detestable to the only person I have in the world right now. And… and… I just don't want to be alone."

He knew he had to say something. "I don't… want to be either," he murmured as he sat on the edge of the bed.

He curled up around her. She felt so small and she trembled violently in his arms.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Me too."

o…o

_She slept fitfully, tossing in bed. She didn't know why she'd acted the way she had for so long. She was mad with grief, she supposed; she'd thought she might've been past that, that completely losing her mind from the pain of loss was something reserved for her youth. She thought that fiery explosions of temper and anger were long outgrown—when Marian died she'd been so overwhelmed with everything that happened all at once immediately after and so utterly shocked that she hadn't done anything but sit in a daze with the rest of them._

_But she was wrong. Zahra—the last scrap of her past that she tried to hold close to her heart—was gone. And she went mad again._

_Anger, venom, madness. It all came up and manifested in angry explosions aimed at anybody who got close, which most often was the one person she loved more than anybody else in the world. And Will sat and took the abuse and waited for her to collapse._

_And he was right there when she did. When the cat died, the last of her sanity snapped. The cat was something to love, something to be close to. And then, as soon as she let herself love it at all, _even the cat_ was killed, and she snapped. She felt as though everything in the world that was close to her was always taken away. Zahra in truth was gone long before she died; the friend she knew as a child and the girl she _was_ when they were friends were ghosts from a time long ago. Part of her—the mad part, which was more and more of her these days—thought that the more she loved someone or something, the quicker it would be taken from her. If she loved Will, it could only be logical that he would be the next to die._

_Her actions hurt both of them, but she didn't know how to get out from under the horrible black depression that consumed her._

_She felt in turmoil. Now more than ever she knew she had to leave Acre. There was simply no way for her to live here. She could _survive,_ yes, but not _live._ But her uncle…_

_When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't in the bedroom anymore. She didn't recognize where she sat and didn't feel nervous or surprised to find herself somewhere different than where she'd fallen asleep. She did immediately look down at the chess board in front of her—she hardly ever played chess; why was it there?—and in doing so noticed her feminine clothing. And something else._

_Her hands looked smaller, she realized. Her hair was long again as it had once been. Her waist wasn't defined and her hips smaller, and her chest even smaller._

_She was a girl again, as she was when she was Safiyyah._

"_Stalling again?"_

_She looked up across the table._

"_Are you afraid I will beat you?" Zahra asked. She, too, was young; perhaps fourteen years old, her face still freckled and her mouth still turned up in her permanent smile. She looked so _real_ and _solid_ there, not at all like a spectre in a vision or a dream. What was going on here? Her face was young and she, had only the hint of adulthood about her, but her voice was still that of the woman she grew up to be._

_Her eyes went wide._

"_What are you doing here?" She croaked._

"_Playing chess. Your uncle wants us to stay busy so that he can speak with the Sultan's messenger in peace."_

_Her wide eyes narrowed and she frowned._

"_But what are you _doing_ here?"_

"_Surprised?"_

"_Well… _yes,_ I am. You are—aren't you?" She scratched her head in confusion. "Or are you?"_

"_Yes, I am. I'm dead,," she finished for her. Her voice was gentle and low and the mirthful look on her face softened._

"_This is a dream."_

"_It is."_

_Her heart sank a little bit—so it was indeed the delusion of a grieving mind. "So, then… why?"_

"_Philomena, I think we need to talk."_

_Pause._

"_What of?"_

_She raised her eyebrows at her._

"_Philomena—"_

"_Don't use that name anymore," Djaq said, cutting her off. "I'm not Philomena. That was a nickname you used when we were children—just like Zahra. You might look it because this is a dream, and I might look it too… but we are not children anymore. We have grown up and moved on from this, from here. We're new people, different people. We are adults—_I_ am an adult. And you… you died in childbirth."_

_Her eyes were still narrowed with the vague hint mirth, but her smile was bittersweet._

"_Then why are you still here? If you are so far gone from Philomena and Safiyyah and everything in Acre, and even the _names_ hurt you—then why stay?"_

_She sat there silently for a long time, staring at the chess board between them. "I thought… that I owed it to him, to Bassam, because he brought me up and I left him the way I did and I—"_

"_It is the past," Gabrielle cut her off again. This was how they talked when they were younger, constantly interrupting each other when they came up with a new thought. But her voice was sterner than she was used to and it made Djaq recoil just the littlest bit._

"_Well, yes, but…"_

"_You cannot change what you did—you are not proud of it, and I am sure your uncle does not like it, either. But you cannot go back and change it. You must instead learn to live with what you've done and the way you've lived. And you _have,_ I think, on your own. You tried to repay him for his kindness, but he _will not_ know you as Djaq—he remembers you as Safiyyah, just like I remembered you as my Philomena. You are not the same as you were then, and it is not who you are."_

"_So you noticed, then."_

"_I did. I wanted to pretend that you were still Philomena, but you are not. Philomena and Safiyyah are ghosts of the past. Bassam does not want to get to know the woman you have become—he wants you to stay the little girl he remembers. I suppose I wanted to, as well, and I accepted it too late. But what I _do_ know of Djaq-the-woman is beautiful."_

_She felt herself smile despite her gloom._

"_Djaq cannot live where Safiyyah still haunts. And you need to live with the family who know you and love you as _Djaq."

"_I know," she whispered. Even in her dream she could feel the suppressed sadness gathering as a lump in her throat. "I know what I have to do. It is the only way I—and Will—can live."_

"_You have to do what is right, if not for yourself then at least for him. Because you love him."_

_Her lip quivered. "I was afraid that if I loved him then something would happen to him. Everything in the world that I love is taken from me."_

"_You think so?"_

"_It is hard not to. The world does not care—we are all the same to the world."_

_She lurched forward and swept her arm over the chess pieces on the table before her until only the pawns remained. She grouped them in the middle of the board._

"_You see? Pawns. We are all the same. Different colours, different sides, but in the end we are all the same."_

_Gabrielle had her eyebrows all the way up to her hairline; she ignored it and picked up one of the white ivory pawns._

"_Robin of Locksley," she said, then she put it back down. She picked up another, and then another, and another. "John Little. Much. Allan a-Dale."_

_She set those pieces down._

"_Little pawns, all the same. Roy White," she picked another piece up. She didn't know Roy and had never met him, but she heard stories of him from her comrades and knew of the way he died. She tossed the piece over her shoulder, paying no mind to where it landed. "He is out of the game, but no worries, there are plenty more where he came from. Roy is gone, so in comes Djaq the Saracen." She took a red pawn and placed it where the other had been. "And Lady Marian, too," she whispered, tipping a pawn over. "Rest in peace, Marian."_

_Silence._

"_Djaq, too," she said, tipping another pawn. "And Sir Edward of Knighton." Another pawn went down. More followed as she rattled off a list of names. "Dan Scarlett, and Gabrielle, and Carter's brother, and Legrand the Queen's guard… small and replaceable and expendable. So how hard could it be for the world to take away Will Scarlett, too? He just another pawn and he is so like everybody else in the world."_

_She could swear she felt herself crying and she wiped her eyes; she felt nothing on her hands._

"_Death and loss not care how wonderful the people are or how many others who love them will be left behind. They just take them away. I used to think that I had seen death so many times that I could not feel it anymore. But I can, and I do, and I hate it."_

"_What do you feel?"_

"_I feel… I feel like…"_

_She took a deep breath._

"_I just _feel._ Too much feeling for words, any words."_

"_And you want to do what, exactly? You cannot bring them back."_

"_I know that! But… I must repay the selfless acts of the past and honour the fallen. It is the right thing to do."_

"_And how do you repay somebody for the past?" Gabrielle asked. "How do you do something in the present, here and now, in payment for something that happened before? How do you _honour_ your _heroes?"

_She choked out the words. "I do not know."_

"_The answer is that you simply cannot. There is nothing you can _do,_ no speech you can give, no monument or memorial that could be built that can sufficiently honour the dead and be worthy of the sacrifices they made—and neither can any words or actions change the past. No matter how much we may want them to, it is futile to try. And all you can do for your heroes is to remember what they fought for, and continue their cause. Remember them, and they will live forever."_

_She sat there for a long, long time, digesting what had been said. Once she told Allan a-Dale that his brother could still live through his own memories, and that the twin she had tried so hard to forget lived inside of her; she even told Will that his father wasn't gone, but rather _away,_ and that as long as he let his father's memory live in his heart and remembered him, he would always be there. These were the things she told other people, to comfort them, but that proved little solace to _her_ in similar situations._

_She knew all of this already. But it had to come from someone else in order for her to pay attention to it._

_She knew what had to be done._

"_I need to leave," she said._

"_Yes," Gabrielle said. "I know."_

_The scene before her was fading and she felt as though she was walking down a dark tunnel._

"_Veris, Philomena," she heard Gabrielle's voice, faint and fading behind her._

_It faded faster and faster ._

_Veris, Philomena… _

o…o

0…0…0…0…0

This chapter gave me a _lot_ of trouble, so I'm glad to see it posted and _definitely_ glad to see it come together in a way I like. One of the things I hate about writing is cutting out parts—and sometimes very large chunks—that have proven to be superfluous or pointless or that no longer fit in with the way the story has changed. I had a scene written for this fic in which Will finds two kittens for Djaq in a desperate attempt to try to cheer her up, but that scene had to go; sure it was cute, but it was utterly pointless.

I hope the dream isn't too much! I liked it but I found it difficult to write—it's quite powerful for something that plays out so quietly in my head. The phrase 'veris, Philomena' means, 'it's true, nightingale' in Latin. It comes from a song called 'Return of the Birds', from which I took the name Philomena. (I was also very surprised to find out that my spell-checker recognizes that name. Go figure.)

The next and final update will be on Friday, just as planned. Like always, if you'd like to leave a review then by all means please do so. It's always nice to hear what people have to say.


	15. Djaq

Once again, the end of a story, and once again, I feel a little bittersweet about it. On the one hand—yay, I finished a story! On the other hand—aw, it's over already! That's always how I feel. I suspect some people reading feel that way, as well, when they've finished writing or reading a story. Anyway, I hope everything wraps up nicely in the end. Thanks once again to my lovely sometime-beta, MissWed, for helping me through it, and my guinea pig friend, K., for letting me test certain scenes on him for his reaction. (You know you've written scenes powerfully when somebody who has no vested interest in the story or the fandom gets teary-eyed.)

Disclaimer: I still don't have the proper ownership of Robin Hood, or Will and Djaq or any of he other characters therein. The BBC owns them. And we've all seen where _that_ leads.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

The bed was empty in the morning when he woke up, but that didn't bother him. They slept the last night together, and it was wonderful. They didn't make love—hadn't done that in quite some time—just slept together, Djaq curled up against him with her face buried in his chest and holding onto him so tightly. Like the night after Marian died, and all they wanted was to be as close as possible to one another.

But she was gone in the morning and the bed was empty. He rolled out of bed and wandered through the house, but Djaq was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Bassam. He had no idea where they were until he walked by his study and heard very loud conversation. It wasn't yelling—not yet—but it was getting close as the words became more impassioned.

"—understand why you have to do this! You have been so happy here, this is completely unexpected to hear you say that you need to leave."

"I have been deceiving you, Bassam. I tried to pretend that I was happy here. I thought that if I pretended long enough, then I would eventually believe it. But I was only deceiving myself, and you."

"And for this you must leave? I simply cannot understand!"

"I am sorry I have not told you until now, but… I did not know when or how and the longer I waited the harder it became. But I am telling you now—we are not staying. The time has come that Will and I leave, and we are _going to."_

"Safiyyah, please, be reasonable—"

"No!"

They spoke in English. The servants wouldn't be able to understand them this way, but he certainly could. He ducked down near the door, hid himself from view, and listened in. Eavesdropping was wrong, but he couldn't help it. Djaq had asked him to be there with her when she eventually broke the news to Bassam, but she'd apparently decided that she was going to go through it alone.

"Stop calling me Safiyyah, please. Nobody else calls me that anymore. I would prefer if you did not, either."

"Your _name_ is Safiyyah, therefore, I shall _call you_ Safiyyah."

"Safiyyah is not _me._ Safiyyah is gone, dead. She died a long time ago. I am not Safiyyah anymore—I am _Djaq_ now, and I have been for a very long time. Except for when there are others here who will not understand or when I am in public, everybody has called me Djaq. It is only _you_ who lives in the past."

"My dear, try to be reasonable. You cannot simply leave your home—what of your life with your husband?"

"Acre is not my home," she said. Her words were icy and Will could see in his mind's eye the familiar cold, hard, angry stare in her dark eyes. She was positively _frightening_ when she was angry. "I do not belong in Acre any more than Will does. My home is in _England_ now. I am poor there, and an outlaw, and I sleep outside in the dirt and I am looked at with scorn sometimes, but I belong better there than I do here."

She paused so Bassam could speak, but he remained quiet.

"Acre was Safiyyah's home. I am very grateful for your kindness and I will never forget what you did for me. You gave me a family when I had none, and I will always love you for that. But I am not Safiyyah anymore, and this is not a place where I can live. You know that, too, I think, but you did not want to believe it."

Silence.

"You have to believe it now. You _have_ to understand why I—why _we_ are doing this. I am leaving. Will and I both—I do not expect you to be happy but I _do_ hope you understand _why_ I have to do it."

Again there as silence; he sneaked forward a little bit and peeked into the study. Bassam was sitting back in a deep chair and folded his hands over his belly. He looked down at his clasped hands and didn't look up again for a long time; Djaq stood before him with her hands behind her back, standing straight and holding her position firmly, like when she fought or argued and wanted to stand firm.

Finally he spoke. "Has he pushed you into this? Has he swayed you?"

"No!"

"You have been so different with him here—I worry that he—"

"I cannot believe you would say that! You _know me_ better than that."

"But I am worried for you, my dear. You have been acting so strangely, so unlike yourself, that I would not rule anything out. This is all so unlike you Safiyyah—"

She cut him off with an angry yell. He didn't understand. Either he _couldn't_ or he _wouldn't_ acknowledge what she was telling him, that she had changed and was no longer the same.

"Don't you see? I am _not_ Safiyyah anymore! I am not, I am _not!_ That is why I cannot stay here! You expect a ghost to come back and live in my body but that will never happen. I am not the same. I tried and I cannot do it. Safiyyah is dead."

She lunged forward and grabbed something from his desk—Will couldn't see what it was, but it made him nervous. Then he saw it in her hand: shears, used for trimming the uneven pages of books. For a split second his stomach plummeted into his groin and the blood drained out of his face. She _wouldn't,_ would she? She'd never been unnecessarily violent before, never hurt anybody out of passion like this, but she'd been acting so unlike herself lately that he didn't know what to or _not to_ expect anymore…

And then she held the shears up and he felt relief wash over him when he realized what she was doing.

As a gesture, a symbol to drive her point home when words failed her so utterly, she grabbed a fistful of her now upper back-length hair and cut it. She dropped the bits of black hair on the floor, and grabbed another fistful and did it again—and again, and again, until the floor was littered with the hair she chopped away and it was once again short and unevenly cropped like it had been before they came here.

Bassam just stood and watched with this eyes growing wider and wider.

"Do you understand yet? I am not Safiyyah—I am not a little girl anymore. I am a woman, and my name is Djaq Scarlett. I am the wife of an English peasant carpenter. I am an outlaw with Robin Hood, and I am a physician. I am a thief when I need to be. But I will never again be a noblewoman, or Safiyyah."

"Safiyyah—"

Bassam looked horrified, and she stormed out; she didn't even notice Will crouched there. The man followed her out, but he _did_ see him—he stopped and stared at him, his eyes wide and his face red, before looking back up and running after Djaq.

They exploded into a shouting match, going from one language to another, arguing as the discussion continued.

Will used the opportunity to get away, to sneak out of the house and into the street.

Some hours later found him sitting in the sand. It was easier to sit outdoors these days. The weather was hot but not as hot as it _had_ been during the worst of the heat, and the blazingly hot summers were cooling down into autumn.

Hard to believe he'd been here—_they'd_ been here—for nearly a year already. It didn't feel like it. It felt longer. And shorter at the same time. But it started right here at Marian's grave, and it ended here, too. Djaq finally told her uncle that they were leaving. It didn't go over well, but then he hadn't really expected it to.

"I just want to go back," he whispered. "We can't stay here and we know that. We've _known_ that for a long time now. So why do I feel so guilty?"

There was no headstone here to mark Marian's grave and the swell in the sand was gone from a year of wind and weathering. Will came down here when he could to leave flowers and arrange some stones around the grave so that they'd at least know she was here. Except that, now that they were leaving there would be nobody here in Acre who would know who was buried here or why, or what she meant to a group of people in England. She was going to be all alone.

Since Robin wasn't here, he'd taken it upon himself to take care of her grave. He couldn't bear the idea of just leaving her out in the desert, unattended and unmourned. If Robin was here, he'd be at the grave all the time.

"Sorry I didn't bring you flowers or anything. I just sorta… ran out to get away from all the shouting. You should've seen his face when he told her—he looked so angry. Not even sad, just… angry. I don't know if it came as a real shock to him or what, or if he knew just as long as we did and he just didn't want to believe it until now. I dunno. I think he just expected Safiyyah to be there, and she's _not."_

He sighed and put his chin in his hands.

"Even though I didn't know her then, but even I can tell she's different now. Maybe they just don't want to let go of the past. The best thing all around is for us to just get out of here, isn't it?"

Silence.

"But I still feel guilty about leaving you here all by yourself."

Marian was dead, gone, and he knew that—she was in Heaven now, he was sure of it. Nobody in the world deserved a spot in Heaven more than Marian did. She died without absolution, though, and he'd always been taught that anybody who died without confessing their last sins and receiving absolution would suffer eternal damnation. He shuddered at the thought. That hardly seemed fair to him even when he still fully believed it—after all, it was never anybody's _fault_ when or where somebody died.

Now he wasn't so sure. After all, if the priests were wrong about the Saracens and about their Holy War over here that seemed far more about a _war_ than at all about _holiness,_ then what else could they have been wrong about? So much of what he believed had been called into question.

But Marian was dead, and far away from here, and she certainly had no more attachment to this place in death than she had in life. She wouldn't be bothered if there was nobody here to tend her grave. But _he_ still felt a little bit like he was abandoning Marian.

"If you were here, you'd probably tell me to get out of this place, wouldn't you?" he asked. "It's no good for me here. I tried it and it didn't work. I just wanted to stay with Djaq, and I got that, but this place… it took everything out of her. And me."

He sighed again. Of course Marian would tell him to get out of this place! It wasn't his home and he had no reason to stay here. She would have had nothing to do with it herself, most likely, except that Robin's cause—and therefore hers—led her here. If the Sherriff and Guy hadn't dragged her to the Holy Land, then she'd've followed Robin.

He sat there for a time longer. The grave was hardly recognizable now, and in no time at all it would be invisible without someone to continually re-tracing the outline and replacing stones. And leaving flowers. Once he left, all evidence of the wonderful woman who fought and died here would vanish. Nobody would know she was here. She would, effectively, disappear.

But not in his heart, or in Djaq's—certainly not in the hearts of the people in England who knew and loved her and _definitely_ not in Robin's. Through that love, he supposed, she was immortal. She'd live as long as people still remembered who she was and what she did.

"Goodbye, Marian. Rest in peace."

He went slowly back to Acre, taking his time and walking around the city. He had no emotional attachment to it and he was glad that soon enough they'd be leaving it—he didn't expect Djaq would want to stick around after that argument with Bassam—but he still felt a twinge in his chest at the thought of leaving. It hadn't been a _happy_ home, but it'd still been his home for the last year. He'd remember the people he knew here and hold onto the fonder memories, he was sure, and the thought of leaving it forever did give him pause.

There was one more place he wanted to see before leaving.

Djaq was there already when he arrived at the small cemetery. She was kneeling near the graves, her hands on the two bunches of flowers atop them.

He approached her slowly and cautiously, not sure how she'd react or what she'd do.

When he was finally behind her, she stood up. It was only when she spoke that he realized she knew he was there.

"It sort of makes you wonder what her favourite colour would've been," she said absently, nodding towards the colourful flowers in the bouquet on the baby Khadidja's grave.

He said nothing.

She turned around and looked at him. Her eyes were wide and sad; her hair hung in her eyes, cut ragged and uneven and haphazard not long ago. She wore no veil over her hair and no paint on her eyes, her plainest clothing, and no jewellery—her only decorations were the old, weathered wooden tag hanging from a bit of string around her neck and the wooden ring on her finger. She was Djaq again. There were no traces of Safiyyah left on her anywhere.

Then she hugged him, holding him tight around his waist and burrowing her forehead against his chest.

"I am sorry," she whispered. "For everything—_everything_. I am sorry. Just… _sorry."_

He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back. He held her close to him, murmuring softly to her with his lips against her hair. For the first in a long time, he felt her relax. She went limp in his arms and leaned heavily into him; he feared that if he moved, she'd tumble to the ground.

"He is not happy, but I did not expect him to be. I think he will continue to ignore me until we are gone. I was right, though," she sniffled. "He wanted Safiyyah—he did not want to know who Djaq is."

She shuddered and breathed heavily—almost crying—into his chest for a long, long time. He just held her, soothed her with comforting words, and stayed firm against her until she quieted and stopped and stood up fully on her own.

"It is time for us to go home."

"Home," he repeated.

"To England, Will. You know that. And I have, too, I think, all along. It just… took a while for me to realize it."

o…o

0…0…0…0…0

The End. Once again, I find myself saddened that another story has come to a close. From balancing this story with the third series canon, to appropriately conveying ridiculous amounts of angst, to keeping the Fluff-o-Matic Fluff Writing side of myself out of it, to trying to write bite-sized chapters, this story has been comparatively difficult to write. It has been a _long_ ride, but I've enjoyed it. Thanks once again to all of you who've read and enjoyed the whole time, and to everybody who took the time to leave feedback. Especially when Djaq and Will have been so sadly excluded from the third series—it's good to know that people are still interested in them! I hope other people write a bit more about them together. They need a bit of love, too, don't they?

Thanks to all of you, I really mean that. For your support and your loyal readership and your feedback when you left it, thank you. I hope to see you in other stories sometime. Maybe I'll get back into fluff territory where I belong. Whatever's next, I hope you have a look at it and enjoy it. Until the next story, then—whatever it may be!


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